English Literature 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



BY 

SIDNEY LEE 



n/ 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1901 



■if 



TViB LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies RECEfvEO 

NOV. 16 190? 

Copyright entry 
CLASS a- XXo. No. 
COPY 3. , 



Copyright, 1901 
By J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Shakespeare, the greatest poet and dramatist 
not merely of the EHzabethan and Jacobean eras, 
but of any age or country, was born nearly six years 
after the accession of Queen Elizabeth. His life 
extended over fifty-two years, and when he died 
James I. had occupied the throne of England for 
thirteen years. Of his elder literary contempo- 
raries, Sir Walter Raleigh was his senior by 
twelve years ; John Lyly and Richard Hooker 
each by ten years ; Robert Greene by four ; Francis 
Bacon by three ; and Christopher Marlowe, his 
tutor in tragedy, by only two months. Of his 
younger contemporaries, Ben Jonson was his junior 
by nine years, John Fletcher by eleven, Massinger 
by nineteen, and Francis Beaumont by twenty. 
Milton, who, from both chronological and critical 
points of view, was next Shakespeare the greatest 
English poet, was born when Shakespeare was 
forty-four years old, and was only contemporary 
with him for the first eight years of life. 

I. The obscurity with which Shakespeare's biog- 
raphy has been long credited is greatly exaggerated.* 
The mere biographical information accessible is far 
more definite and more abundant than that con- 
cerning any other dramatist of the day. Shake- 
speare's father, John Shakespeare, was a dealer in 

1 The outline of Shakespeare's career here supplied is based 
by the present writer on his Life of Willia^n Shakespeare^ first 
published in 1898, to which the reader is referred for an exhaustive 
account of the facts, together with the original sources of information. 
The illustrated library edition of the work published in 1899 contains 
the latest corrections and a few additions. A cheaper popular 
edition, somewhat abbreviated for the use of students and general 
readers, appeared in 1900. 

3 



agricultural produce at Stratford-on-Avon, a pros- 
perous country town in the heart of England. 
John Shakespeare was himself son of a small 
farmer residing in the neighbouring village of 
Snitterfield. The family was of good yeoman 
stock. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was 
also daughter of a local farmer who enjoyed 
somewhat greater wealth and social standing than 
the poet's father and his kindred. William Shake- 
speare, the eldest child that survived infancy, was 
baptised in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon 
on 26th April 1564. 

The poet w^as educated with a younger brother, 
Gilbert, at the public grammar-school of Stratford — 
an institution re-established by Edward VI. on a 
mediaeval foundation. The course of study was 
mainly confined to the Latin classics, and Shake- 
speare proved his familiarity with the Latin school- 
books in use at Elizabethan grammar-schools by 
quoting many phrases from them in his earliest 
play. Love's Labour's Lost. Until Shakespeare was 
thirteen years old his father's fortunes prospered. 
Within that period John Shakespeare took a pro- 
minent part in the municipal affairs of Stratford. 
After holding many inferior offices, he was elected 
an alderman in 1565, and in 1568 he became bailiff 
or mayor. But about 1577 his business declined, 
and he was involved for many years afterwards 
in a series of pecuniary difHculties. As a conse- 
quence his eldest son was removed from school 
at the early age of thirteen or thereabouts, and 
was brought into the paternal business to buy 
and sell agricultural produce. But he was not 
destined to render his family much assistance in 
that capacity. In 1582, when eighteen years old, he 
increased his father's anxieties by marrying. His 
wife Anne was daughter of Richard Hathaway, a 
farmer residing in the adjoining hamlet of Shottery. 
She was no less than eight years her lover's senior. 
There is good reason to believe that Shakespeare 
was a reluctant party to the marriage, to which he 



was driven by the lady's friends in order to pro- 
tect her reputation. The ceremony took place in 
November 1582, and a daughter, Susanna, was 
born in the following May. A year later twins 
were born, a son and daughter, named respec- 
tively Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare had no 
more children, and it is probable that in 1585 he 
left his family at Stratford to seek a livelihood 
elsewhere, and for some twelve years saw little 
or nothing of his wife and children. 

A credible tradition assigns the immediate cause 
of Shakespeare's abandonment of his country home 
to a poaching adventure in Sir Thomas Lucy's 
park at Charlecote, which is situated within five 
miles of Stratford. It is related that he was caught 
there in the act of stealing deer and rabbits, and 
was ordered to be whipped and imprisoned by the 
owner. Sir Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is reported 
to have penned bitter verses (which have not 
survived) on his prosecutor, and Lucy's threat of 
further punishment is said to have finally driven 
Shakespeare from Stratford. He subsequently 
avenged himself on Sir Thomas Lucy by carica- 
turing him as Justice Shallow in the Second Part 
of Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

There is a further tradition that Shakespeare 
on leaving Stratford served as schoolmaster in an 
adjacent village. But there is little doubt that at 
an early date in 1586, when twenty-two years old, 
he travelled on foot to London, passing through 
Oxford on the way. It was with the capital city 
of the country that the flower of his literary life 
was to be identified. London was chiefly his 
home during the twenty-three years that elapsed 
between 1586 and 1609, between the twenty- third 
and forty-sixth years of his age. 

Probably only one resident in London was already 
known to him on his arrival — Richard Field, who 
some seven years before had left Stratford to be 
bound apprentice to the London printer Vautrollier. 
Field subsequently printed for Shakespeare the 



earliest work that he sent to press. On his settle- 
ment in the metropolis Shakespeare sought a living 
at the theatre. It is said that at first he tended 
visitors' horses outside a playhouse. In a very 
short time he was employed inside the playhouse, 
probably as call-boy ; but opportunity of trying 
his skill as an actor was given him, and he stood 
the test sufficiently well to gain speedy admission 
to one of the chief acting companies of the day. 
The acting company to which Shakespeare was 
admitted may with safety be identified with that 
under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth's favourite, 
the Earl of Leicester ; on Leicester's death in 1588 
the patronage of the company, which implied a 
merely nominal relationship, passed in succes- 
sion to Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby 
(d. 1 594) ; to Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain 
(d. 1596); to Lord Hunsdon's son, also Lord 
Chamberlain ; and finally, on Queen Elizabeth's 
death in 1603, to the new king, James I. Thus 
Shakespeare's company, which at the time he 
joined it was known as Lord Leicester's players, 
afterwards bore the successive titles of Lord 
Strange's company (1588-92), the Lord Cham- 
berlain's company (1592-96), Lord Hunsdon's 
company (1596-97), again the Lord Chamberlain's 
company (i 597-1603), and finally of the King's 
company from the accession of James I. in 1603. 
When he joined the company it was doubtless 
performing at The Theatre, the earliest play- 
house built in England ; it was erected in Shore- 
ditch in 1576 by James Burbage, father of the 
great actor, Richard Burbage. While the com- 
pany was under Lord Strange's patronage it 
found new quarters in the Rose, a theatre built 
in 1592 on the Bankside, Southwark. This was 
the earliest scene of Shakespeare's conspicuous 
successes alike as actor and dramatist. During 
1594 Shakespeare frequented for a short time the 
stage of another new theatre at Newington Butts, 
and between 1595 and 1599 the stages of the 



oldest playhouses in the kingdom — the Curtain and 
The Theatre in Shoreditch. In 1599 yet another 
new theatre was built on the Bankside, Southwark ; 
this was the famous Globe Theatre, an octagonal 
wooden structure. With that theatre Shake- 
speare's professional career was almost exclusively 
identified for the rest of his life, and in its profits 
he acquired an important share. At the close of 
1609, when his theatrical career was nearing its 
end, Shakespeare's company occupied a second 
stage in addition to that of the Globe — the stage 
of the Blackfriars Theatre. 

Acting companies in Shakespeare's day seldom 
remained in London during the summer or early 
autumn. They toured in the provinces, and it is 
reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare visited 
many English towns in his capacity of a travelling 
actor. There is small foundation for the con- 
jecture that he extended his journeys to Scotland, 
and practically none for the view that he visited 
the Continent, although several companies of 
English actors are known to have performed at 
foreign courts. 

Little information survives of the exact roles 
which Shakespeare undertook. Few extant docu- 
ments refer directly to performances by him. But 
at Christmas 1594, it is important to note, he joined 
William Kemp, the chief comedian of the day, 
and Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic actor, 
in * two several comedies or interludes ' which 
were played on St Stephen's Day and on Inno- 
cents' Day (December 27 and 28) at Greenwich 
Palace before the queen. Shakespeare's appear- 
ance at court for the first time on this occasion 
in 1594 sufficiently indicates his growing fame 
in the worlds alike of fashion and the theatre. 
Subsequently his name heads the list of original 
performers in Ben Jonson's Every Man iii his 
Hu7Jtour (1598), and he was one of the original 
performers in Jonson's Sejaniis (1603). The 
dramatist's early biographer, Nicholas Rowe, re- 



8 

corded the performance by Shakespeare of ' the 
Ghost in his own Hainlet^ and John Davies of 
Hereford noted that *he played some kingly parts 
in sport.' One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, 
presumably Gilbert, recalled at a long subsequent 
date his brother's performance of Adam vcv As You 
Like It. In the 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare's 
* Works,' his own name headed the prefatory list 
of * the principall actors in these playes.' 

II. But it is not his histrionic activity that lends 
real interest to Shakespeare's name or history ; 
it is his unmatchable achievement in dramatic 
poetry. His earliest experience as a dramatic 
writer was gained in the way of revising plays 
by other writers who had sold their works to the 
manager of his company. Much that thus came 
from his pen in his early days has possibly re- 
mained concealed in plays attributed to other 
authors. In a few cases, however, his labours as 
reviser were publicly acknowledged or have been 
detected by critics ; they have usually proved 
to be so thorough that the revised compositions 
are entitled to rank among original efforts. It is 
difficult to fix precisely the date at which his 
dramatic writing, whether as reviser or indepen- 
dent author, began. It is probable that the whole 
of it was done between 1591 and 161 1. During 
that time he apparently produced on the average 
two new or adapted plays each year. 

The exact order in which Shakespeare's Plays 
were written cannot be given with any certainty. 
Only sixteen of the thirty-seven plays commonly 
assigned to him were published in his lifetime, 
and the date of publication rarely indicates the 
date of composition : a piece was often published 
many years after it was written. But the subject- 
matter and metre both afford rough clues to the 
period in the dramatist's lifetime to which the 
play may be referred. Although Shakespeare's 
songs and poems prove him a master of lyric 
verse of varied metres, all but a small fragment 



of his dramatic work is in blank-verse, and 
Shakespeare's blank-verse underwent much change 
in construction in the course of his career. In 
his earlier years he strictly adhered to formal 
rules of pause and stress ; the lines are clearly 
marked off from one another by an inevitable 
rest after the fifth accented syllable. At the 
same time rhyming couplets are frequent. Fan- 
tastic conceits and puns or plays upon words 
constantly recur. In Shakespeare's matured work 
few of these features find a place. The poet 
ignores the artificial restrictions imposed by the 
laws of prosody. He varies the pauses of his 
blank-verse lines indefinitely, in order that they 
may respond to every call of human feeling. 
Unemphatic syllables often end the lines, and 
render stress there impossible. The flexibility or 
pliancy is increased by the introduction of extra- 
metrical syllables at the end of lines or occasion- 
ally in the middle. In later plays rhyme almost 
entirely disappears. 

The following passages illustrate the main differ- 
ences in the character of Shakespeare's early and 
late blank-verse. The first extract is from Lov^s 
Labour'' s Lost (Act II. sc. i. 11. 9-19) : 

Boyet. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace, 
As Nature was in making graces dear, 
When she did starve the general world beside, 
And prodigally gave them all to you. 

Princess. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but 
mean, 
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise : 
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye. 
Not uttered by base sale of chapmen's tongues : 
I am less proud to hear you tell my worth 
Than you much willing to be counted wise 
In spending your wit in the praise of mine. 

The next extract is from one of the very latest 
plays, The Tempest (Act. v. sc. i. 11. 1 53-171) : 



10 

Prospero. I perceive, these lords 

At this encounter do so much admire, 
That they devour their reason, and scarce think 
Their eyes do offices of truth, their words 
Are natural breath : but, howsoe'er you have 
Been justled from your senses, know for certain 
That I am Prospero, and that very duke 
Which was thrust forth of Milan ; who most strangely 
Upon this shore, where you were wreck'd, was landed. 
To be the lord on 't. No more yet of this ; 
For 'tis a chronicle of day by day. 
Not a relation for a breakfast, nor 
Befitting this first meeting. Welcome, sir ; 
This cell's my court : here have I few attendants. 
And subjects none abroad : pray you, look in. 
My dukedom since you have given me again, 
I will requite you with as good a thing ; 
At least bring forth a wonder, to content ye. 
As much as me my dukedom. 

At the same time it is noticeable that nearly a 
third of Shakespeare's dramatic work is in prose, 
which, commonly lucid and pointed and free from 
diffuseness or ornament, shows no radical change 
in character at any period of his career. A study 
of Shakespeare's prose does not materially help 
the student in determining the chronology of the 
plays. The only fact about his use of prose that 
is of much importance in this connection is that 
prose figures to a larger extent in the work of 
middle life than in that of his early or late years. 
It is not always easy to determine the principles 
which governed Shakespeare's employment of 
prose in place of metre, but in the writings of his 
middle life he almost invariably placed it in the 
mouths of the humorous or * low-comedy' characters 
(e.g. FalstaiT), of the spokesmen of mobs, of clowns, 
fools, and of ladies when they are speaking confi- 
dentially to one another ; letters and quoted docu- 
ments are usually in prose. How admirably terse 
and direct could be Shakespeare's epistolary style 
may be judged from Macbeth's letter to his wife 
{Macbeth^ Act i. sc. v. 1. i) : 



II 

They met me in the day of success ; and I have learned 
by the perfectest report, they have more in them than 
mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question 
them further, they made themselves air, into which they 
vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, 
came missives from the king, who all-hailed me ' Thane 
of Cawdor ; ' by which title, before, these weird sisters 
saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, 
with * Hail, king that shalt be ! ' This have I thought 
good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, 
that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being 
ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to 
thy heart, and farewell. 

As in his treatment of metre, so in his choice and 
handling of subject-matter, differences are discern- 
ible in Shakespeare's plays which clearly suggest 
the gradual but steady development of dramatic 
power and temper, and separate with some defi- 
niteness early from late work. The comedies of 
Shakespeare's younger days often trench upon the 
domains of farce ; those of his middle and later life 
approach the domain of tragedy. Tragedy in his 
hands markedly grew, as his years advanced, in 
subtlety and intensity. His tragic themes became 
more and more complex, and betrayed deeper 
and deeper knowledge of the workings of human 
passion. In one respect only was Shakespeare's 
method unchangeable. From first to last it was 
his habit to borrow his plots, though he freely 
altered and adapted them to suit his growing sense 
of artistic fitness. The range of literature which 
he studied in his search for tales whereon to build 
his dramas was extraordinarily wade. He con- 
sulted not merely chronicles of English history 
(Ralph Holinshed's, for example), on which he 
based his English historical plays, but he was 
widely read in the romances of Italy (mainly in 
French or English translations), in the biogra- 
phies of Plutarch, and in the plays and romances 
of English contemporaries. His Roman plays 
of Julius CcBsar^ Antony and Cleopatra^ and 



12 

Coriolanus closely follow the narratives of the 
Greek biographer. A romance by his contem- 
porary, Thomas Lodge, suggested the fable of As 
You Like It. Novels by Bandello are the ultimate 
sources of the stories of Romeo and Juliet^ Much 
Ado about Nothings and Twelfth Night. A IPs 
Well that Ends Well and Cynibeline largely rest 
on foundations laid by Boccaccio ; the tales of 
Othello and Measure for Measure are traceable to 
Giraldi Cinthio. Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques^ 
a collection of French versions of the Italian 
romances of Bandello, was often in Shakespeare's 
hands. But although Shakespeare's borrowings 
wereilarge and open-handed, his debt was greater 
in appearance than reality. His power of assimi- 
lation was exceptionally strong, and the books that 
he read can only be likened to base ore on which 
he brought to bear the magic of his genius, with 
the result that he transmuted it into gold. 

Lovers Labour's Lost, to which may be assigned 
priority in point of time of all Shakespeare's 
dramatic productions, may, from internal evidence, 
be allotted to 1591. It contains 1028 five-measure 
rhyming lines out of a total of 2789, and puns 
are very numerous. The names of the chief 
characters are drawn from the leaders in the civil 
war in France, which was in progress between 
1589 and 1594, and many matters that were then 
occupying the minds of those who moved in fashion- 
able and political circles are touched upon. The 
piece is conceived in an airy vein of good-humoured 
satire, but genuine poetic feeling breaks forth in 
the speeches of the hero, Biron (cf Act IV. sc. iii. 
11. 289-365). The play was revised in 1597, prob- 
ably for a performance at court, and was first 
published in the following year. Shakespeare's 
name there first appeared on a title-page as that 
of author of a play. 

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a comedy of 
love and friendship, belongs to the same period. 
The story resembles one in the Spanish pastoral 



13 

romance of Diana^ by George de Montemayor. 
There is much fascinating poetry in the serious 
portions of the play, but the note is often lyric 
rather than dramatic — a sure sign of youthful 
composition. There is a lyrical irrelevancy, for 
example, in much of Julia's ingenuous plea in 
favour of letting her love for Proteus have full 
play (Act II. sc. vii. 11. 24-38) : 

The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns. 

The current that with gentle murmur gHdes, 

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage ; 

But when his fair course is not hindered, 

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, 

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage ; 

And so by many winding nooks he strays. 

With willing sport, to the wild ocean. 

Then let me go, and hinder not my course : 

I'll be as patient as a gentle stream. 

And make a pastime of each weary step, 

Till the last step have brought me to my love ; 

And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil 

A blessed soul doth in Elysium. 

The Two Gentlemen was first published in the 
first folio edition of the works in 1623. 

Shakespeare's next play. The Comedy of Errors, 
also first published in 1623, was for the most part 
a boisterous farce, resembling in subject-matter 
the Mencechmi of Plautus. But the impressive 
denouement (Act v. sc. i.) in which the shrewish 
wife Adriana confesses her sins against her hus- 
band, and is solemnly rebuked by the Abbess, is 
in the finest spirit of sober and restrained comedy. 
The speech of the Abbess is especially noteworthy 
(Act V. sc. i. 11. 68-86) : 

Abbess. The venom clamours of a jealous woman 
Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. 
It seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing : 
And thereof comes it that his head is light. 
Thou say'st his meat was sauced with thy upbraidings : 
Unquiet meals make ill digestions ; 



14 

Thereof the raging fire of fever bred ; 

And what 's a fever but a fit of madness ? 

Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls : 

Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue 

But moody [moping] and dull melancholy, 

Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair ; 

And at her heels a huge infectious troop 

Of pale distemperatures and foes to life ? 

In food, in sport, in life -preserving rest 

To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast : 

The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits 

Have scared thy husband from the use of wits. 

It was after the production of these plays, which 
show great but not unparalleled ability, that Shake- 
speare produced his first tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. 
The work gave conclusive evidence of a poetic and 
dramatic instinct of unprecedented quality. As a 
tragic poem on the theme of love it has no rival 
in any literature. It was based upon a tragic 
romance of Italian origin, which w^as already 
popular in English versions (see pages 262, 263). 
The date of composition may, perhaps, be gathered 
from the Nurse's speech, "Tis since the earth- 
quake now eleven years.' No earthquake had 
been experienced in England in the sixteenth 
century after 1580, and a few parallelisms with 
Daniel's Co7nplainte of Rosa7nond^ published in 
1 59 1, seem to point to its completion in that year. 
An anonymous and surreptitious quarto edition 
was published in 1597 and an authentic quarto 
appeared in 1599. The speech of Romeo at the 
tomb of Juliet before he drinks the poison illus- 
trates the intensity of Shakespeare's dramatic feel- 
ing and insight at this early stage in his career 
(Act V. sc. iii. 11. 91-120) : 

O my love ! my wife ! 
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, 
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty : 
Thou art not conquer'd ; beauty's ensign yet 
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks. 
And death's pale flag is not advanced there. 



15 

Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet ? 

O, what more favour can I do to thee 

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain 

To sunder his that was thine enemy ? 

Forgive me, cousin ! Ah, dear Juliet, 

Why art thou yet so fair ? shall I believe 

That unsubstantial death is amorous, 

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps 

Thee here in dark to be his paramour ? 

For fear of that, I still will stay with thee. 

And never from this palace of dim night 

Depart again : here, here will I remain 

With worms that are thy chambermaids ; O, here 

Will I set up my everlasting rest. 

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars 

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last ! 

Arms, take your last embrace ! and, lips, O you 

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss 

A dateless bargain to engrossing death ! 

Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide ! 

Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 

The dashing rocks thy sea- sick weary bark. 

Here's to my love ! [Drinks.] O true apothecary ! 

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. 

With characteristic versatility Shakespeare soon 
turned his attention to a very different species of 
dramatic work — the dramatisation of episodes in 
English history. The first efforts in this kind 
with which his name can be associated — the 
three parts of Henry VI. — were versions of other 
men's works which he had revised. They mainly 
treat of the civil wars in progress during the reign 
of the politically weak and superstitious king, 
Henry VI. On March 3, 1592, Henry V/., the 
piece subsequently known as T/ie First Part of 
Henry V/., was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord 
Strange's company of actors. A second piece in 
continuation of the theme quickly followed, and 
a third, treating of the concluding incidents of 
Henry VI. 's reign, was played in the early 
autumn. The first of the three plays, which 
was originally published in the collected edition 



i6 

of Shakespeare's works, shows sparse marks of 
Shakespeare's workmanship. It was probably a 
hasty revision by Marlowe and Shakespeare of 
a crude and clumsy piece of independent origin. 
Shakespeare's genuine thought and expression are 
visible in such a brilliant passage as (i Henry F7., 
Act I. sc. ii. 11. 133-5) • 

Glory is like a circle in the water, 

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself 

Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. 

But very few scenes bear the impress of his style ; 
the rest, including the barbarous handling of the 
story of Joan of Arc, are from a far inferior pen. 
The second and third parts of Henry VI. ^ which 
were first connected with Shakespeare's name on 
thgir publication in the First Folio, had been 
printed previously under other titles, and in forms 
very different from^ that which they subsequently 
assumed in the First Folio. The second part of 
Shakespeare's Henry VI. was first published in 

1594 with the title The first part of the con- 
tention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke 
and Lancaster J and the third part was printed in 

1595 as The true tr age die of Richard., Duke of 
Yorke. There seems little doubt that The first 

part of the conte7ition and The True Tragedie 
were by Marlowe aided by Shakespeare, but 
were not themselves original compositions, being 
liberally constructed out of older pieces now lost. 
The second and third parts of Henry V/., as 
they figure in the First Folio, were doubtless the 
outcome of a further revision of the Contention 
and True Tragedie., for which Shakespeare may 
he held to have been mainly responsible. One 
of the most notable amplifications of the True 
Tragedie is the touching soliloquy, while the 
battle of Towton is raging, of Henry VI., who 
there pathetically contrasts the happiness of a 
shepherd's life with that of a king (3 Henry F/., 
Act II. sc. V. 11. 21-54) : 



17 

O God ! methinks it were a happy life, 

To be no better than a homely swain : 

To sit upon a hill, as I do now, 

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 

Thereby to see the minutes how they run, 

How many make the hour full complete ; 

How many hours bring about the day ; 

How many days will finish up the year ; 

How many years a mortal man may live. 

When this is known, then to divide the times : 

So many hours must I tend my flock ; 

So many hours must I take my rest ; 

So many hours must I contemplate ; 

So many hours must I sport myself ; 

So many days my ewes have been with young ; 

So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean ; 

So many years ere I shall shear the fleece : 

So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, 

Pass'd over to the end they were created. 

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. 

Ah, what a life were this i how sweet ! how lovely ! 

Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade 

To shepherds looking on their silly sheep. 

Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy 

To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? 

O, yes, it doth ; a thousand-fold it doth. 

And to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds, 

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, 

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, 

All which secure and sweetly he enjoys. 

Is far beyond a prince's delicates. 

His viands sparkling in a golden cup. 

His body couched in a curious bed. 

When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. 

Shakespeare's final revision of the trilogy of 
plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI. met 
with a triumphant reception on the stage. But 
older dramatists grew jealous, and in the autumn 
of 1592 one of them, Robert Greene, denounced 
the younger dramatist in A Groats-worth of Wit 
as 'an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, 
that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players 



i8 

hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out 
a blanke verse as the best of you, and being an 
absolute Johannes factotum is, in his own con- 
ceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie.' The 
italicised words parody a line in 3 Henry VI. 
(Act I. sc. iv. 1. 137), 'Oh Tiger's heart wrapped in 
a woman's hide.' The publisher of Greene's ill- 
natured attack on Shakespeare, Henry Chettle, at 
the end of the year apologised to the young writer 
for the rancour of Greene's pen, in the preface 
to a tract called Kind Hartes Dreame. Chettle 
frankly acknowledged Shakespeare's civility of 
demeanour, excellence in his quality of actor, 
uprightness of dealing, and 'facetious grace in 
writing.' 

Shakespeare pursued the path which he first 
essayed in the plays of He7iry VI. in the two 
tragedies that succeeded them — Richard III. and 
Richard II. In Richard III. Shakespeare plainly 
shows a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's 
footsteps. The tragedy takes up the history near 
the point at which the third part of Henry VI. 
left it. The hero's hypocrisy is pictured with 
much irony. The study of vicious ambition is 
rarely relieved by poetic passages, but a pecu- 
liarly Shakespearean outburst of poetic sentiment 
characterises the description by Tyrrel of the 
murder of the princes in the Tower (Act IV. 
sc. iii. 11. 4-22) : 

Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn 
To do this ruthless piece of butchery, 
Although they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs, 
Melting with tenderness and kind compassion 
Wept like two children in their deaths' sad stories. 

* Lo, thus,' quoth Dighton, ' lay those tender babes : ' 

* Thus, thus,' quoth Forrest, ' girdling one another 
Within their innocent alabaster arms : 

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk. 

Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other. 

A book of prayers on their pillow lay ; 

Which once,' quoth Forrest, * almost changed my mind ; 



19 

But O ! the devil ' — there the villain stopp'd ; 
Whilst Dighton thus told on : * We smothered 
The most replenished sweet work of nature 
That from the prime creation e'er she framed.' 
Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse ; 
They could not speak ; and so I left them both, 
To bring this tidings to the bloody king. 

Richard II. seems to have followed Richard III, 
without delay, and here again the influence of Mar- 
lowe is strongly marked. Marlowe's Edward II, 
clearly inspired Richard II The sober note of 
patriotism and of reverence for the best traditions 
of the country, which was characteristic of all 
Shakespeare's historical plays, was sounded with 
exceptional effect in John of Gaunt's dying 
speech (Act ll. sc. i. 11. 31-68) : 

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired 

And thus expiring do foretell of him : 

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, 

For violent fires soon burn out themselves ; 

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short ; 

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes ; 

W^ith eager feeding food doth choke the feeder : 

Light vanity, insatiate cormorant. 

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. 

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 

This other Eden, demi-paradise, 

This fortress built by Nature for herself 

Against infection and the hand of war ; 

This happy breed of men, this little world, 

This precious stone set in the silver sea, 

Wliich serves it in the office of a wall, 

Or as a moat defensive to a house, 

Against the envy of less happier lands ; 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, 

Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth. 

Renowned for their deeds as far from home. 

For Christian service and true chivalry. 

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry 

Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son ; 

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, 



Dear for her reputation through the world, 
Is now leased out — I die pronouncing it — 
Like to a tenement or pelting farm : 
England, bound in with the triumphant sea, 
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege 
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, 
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds : 
That England, that was wont to conquer others, 
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. 
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, 
How happy then were my ensuing death ! 

Both Richard III. and Richard II. were pub- 
lished anonymously in 1597. Between February 
1593 and the end of the year the London theatres 
were closed owing to . the plague ; but Shake- 
speare's pen was busily employed, and 1594 prob- 
ably proved more prolific than any other year 
of his life. To it may be assigned the greater 
part of three plays — Titus Andronicus^ The Mer- 
chant of Venice^ and King John. 

Titus Andronicus^ a sanguinary and revolting 
picture of the decadence of imperial Rome, was 
probably only in part Shakespeare's work. It 
was suggested by a piece called Titus and 
Vespasian^ which was acted by Lord Strange's 
men in 1 592, and is now only extant in a German 
version published in 1620. Titus Andronicus was 
acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on January 23, 
1593-4, as a 'new' piece. It was subsequently 
performed by Shakespeare's company. Internal 
evidence suggests that Kyd wrote much of 
it. But there are many powerful passages for 
which Shakespeare alone could have been re- 
sponsible. The heart-rending speech in which 
the hero laments the ruin that overtakes his 
children contains such lines as these (Act ill. 
sc. i. 11. 93-97) : 

For now I stand as one upon a rock, 
Environ'd with a wilderness of sea ; 
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, 
Expecting ever when some envious surge 
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. 



21 

Then, turning to his tongueless daughter, he adds 
{Ibid.^ 11. 111-113) : 

When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears 
Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey-dew 
Upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd. 

In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare showed 
to splendid advantage his power of investing 
ancient legends with genuinely dramatic point 
and poetry. Ser Giovanni's // Pecorone^ a four- 
teenth-century collection of Italian novels, supplied 
him with the main plot of the pound of flesh. 
Stephen Gosson, in his Schoole of Abuse (1579), 
mentions a lost play called The few^ in which 
apparently the tales of the pound of flesh and 
the caskets were combined. Robert Wilson's 
extant play of the Three Ladies of London roughly 
anticipated some of Shakespeare's scenes between 
the Jewish creditor Shylock and his debtor 
Antonio. Shakespeare's Jew is a far subtler study 
of Jewish character than Marlowe achieved in 
his Jew of Malta^ and the delicate comedy which 
relieves the serious interest attaching to Shylock's 
fate lay wholly out of Marlowe's reach. But 
Shakespeare, in the Mercha7tt of Venice^ betrayed 
the last definable traces of his discipleship to Mar- 
lowe. Marlowe's y^w of Malta was the forerunner 
of Shylock, although the topic was doubtless 
immediately suggested to Shakespeare by the 
popular excitement aroused in London by the 
recent execution of the queen's Jewish physician, 
Roderigo Lopez. Passages notable for high poetic 
feeling and for eloquent ratiocination abound in 
the Mercha7tt of Venice. Shylock's claim to be 
treated as a man, Portia's plea for mercy, 
Lorenzo's speech on the power of music, and 
Bassanio's exposure of the deceitfulness of appear- 
ances illustrate the play's wealth of thought and 
beauty of language. One of the most beautiful 
passages is the speech in which Portia accepts 
the suit of her lover Bassanio (Act ill. sc. ii. 
11. 149-175): 



22 

You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, 

Such as I am : though for myself alone 

I would not be ambitious in my wish, 

To wish myself much better ; yet, for you 

I would be trebled twenty times myself ; 

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times 

More rich ; 

That only to stand high in your account, 

I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends. 

Exceed account ; but the full sum of me 

Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, 

Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised ; 

Happy in this, she is not yet so old 

But she may learn ; happier than this. 

She is not bred so dull but she can learn ; 

Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit 

Commits itself to yours to be directed. 

As from her lord, her governor, her king. 

Myself and what is mine to you and yours 

Is now converted : but now I was the lord 

Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, 

Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now. 

This house, these servants, and this same myself 

Are yours, my lord : I give them with this ring ; 

Which when you part from, lose, or give away, 

Let it presage the ruin of your love. 

And be my vantage to exclaim on you. 

The Merchant of Venice may have been first pro- 
duced under the name of the Venesyon Comedy 
on August 25, 1594. It was revised later, and 
was not published until 1600, when two editions 
appeared, each printed from a different stage 
copy. 

Turning once again to English history, Shake- 
speare, also in 1594, adapted his drama of 
King John from a worthless play called The 
Troublesome Raigne of King John (1591). This 
old piece was fraudulently reissued in 161 1 as 
'written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as by * W. Shake- 
speare.' The three chief characters in Shake- 
speare's King John — the mean and cruel king, 
the desperately wronged and passionate Constance, 



23 

and the soldierly humorist Falconbridge — are in 
all essentials Shakespeare's own invention. In 
Arthur boyish emotion is portrayed with a fresh- 
ness and truthfulness that are scarcely known 
elsewhere in dramatic literature. As in other of 
Shakespeare's historical plays, the general effect 
of the tragic history of King John is to instil 
a reasonable and honourable patriotism, to which 
the Bastard's concluding lines give very eloquent 
expression (Act V. sc. vii. 1. Ii2-end) : 

This England never did, nor ever shall, 

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 

But when it first did help to wound itseL. 

Now these her princes are come home again. 

Come the three corners of the world in arms. 

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, 

If England to itself do rest but true. 

III. At the same epoch in his career (i 591-4) as 
saw these remarkable efforts in the drama, Shake- 
speare also wrote and published two Narratlye 
Poems, both of which paraphrased with melodious 
fluency Ovidian themes of somewhat lascivious 
tendency. In May 1593 Richard Field, Shake- 
speare's fellow-townsman, published the first poem, 
Venus and Adonis. The character of the verse 
may be illustrated by Venus's lament over the 
body of the dead Adonis (11. 1075-1080) : 

Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost ! 
What face remains alive that's worth the viewing ? 
Whose tongue is music now ? what canst thou boast 
Of things long since, or any thing ensuing ? 

The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim ; 

But true-sweet beauty lived and died with him. 

No name appeared on the title-page, but there 
was a fully-signed dedication addressed to a 
brilliant young nobleman, Henry Wriothesley, 
third Earl of Southampton. A year later Shake- 
speare's poem of Lucrece appeared, and it too 
was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. A 



24 

ore serious note is often sounded here than 
in the earHer poem, and there are many reflec- 
tions on human affairs which embody convic- 
tions cherished by Shakespeare through life ; for 
example (11. 1240- 1246) : 

For men have marble, women waxen, minds, 
And therefore are they form'd as marble will ; 
The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds 
Is formed in them by force, by fraud, or skill : 
Then call them not the authors of their ill, 
No more than wax shall be accounted evil 
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil. 

These two volumes constituted Shakespeare's first 
appeal to the reading public, and they were wel- 
comed with unqualified enthusiasm. Spenser and 
other contemporary men of letters panegyrised 
the genius which the poems betrayed. The 
general reader showed himself no less apprecia- 
tive. No fewer than seven editions of Venus 
appeared between 1594 and 1602, and an eighth 
followed in 1607. Lucrece achieved a fifth edition 
in the year of Shakespeare's death. 

In other directions Shakespeare was strengthen- 
ing his position and reputation. He was gaining 
personal esteem in influential quarters outside 
the circles of actors and men of letters. The 
Earl of Southampton, as the dedicatory addresses 
before his narrative poems show, had become his 
acknowledged patron. His 'civil demeanour' 
recommended him to the habitu6s of the court, 
and his summons to act before Queen Elizabeth 
at Christmas 1594 indicated the courtiers' personal 
interest in him. Thenceforth his plays were 
frequently performed before the queen by himself 
and his fellow-actors at her palaces of Whitehall, 
Richmond, and Greenwich, and his recognition 
as the greatest poet and dramatist of the day 
steadily grew. 

The bulk of Shakespeare's Sonnets were, 
doubtless, written in 1594, soon after he had 



25 

sought and won the patronage of the Earl of 
Southampton. At that date the sonnet enjoyed 
a popularity among poets in England that has 
never been equalled. Shakespeare characteristi- 
cally tried his hand on the popular poetic instru- 
ment when its vogue was at its height. The 
metrical form of his sonnets is that peculiar to the 
English sonneteers (three decasyllabic quatrains, 
each rhyming alternately, and a concluding rhym- 
ing couplet). In literary value the extant collection 
is notably unequal, but the best examples reach 
levels of lyric melody and meditative energy that 
are not matched elsewhere in poetry. Among the 
finest of Shakespeare's sonnets are these : 



When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste : 
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow. 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe. 

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight : 
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan. 

Which I new pay as if not paid before. 
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 
All losses are restored and sorrows end. 



Full many a glorious morning have I seen 

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye. 
Kissing with golden face the meadows green. 

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy ; 
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 

With ugly rack on his celestial face. 
And from the forlorn world his visage hide. 

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace : 
Even so my sun one early morn did shine 

With all triumphant splendour on my brow ; 



26 

But, out, alack ! he was but one hour mine, 

The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now 
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ; 
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth. 

LIII. 

What is your substance, whereof are you made, 

That millions of strange shadows on you tend ? 
Since every one hath, every one, one shade. 

And you, but one, can every shadow lend. 
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit 

Is poorly imitated after you ; 
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set. 

And you in Grecian tires are painted new : 
Speak of the spring and foison of the year, 

The one doth shadow of your beauty show, 
The other as your bounty doth appear ; 

And you in every blessed shape we know. 
In all external grace you have some part. 
But you like none, none you, for constant heart. 

cxvi. 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds. 

Or bends with the remover to remove : 
O, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark. 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; 
It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
Ir this be error and upon me proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

On the other hand, some of Shakespeare's sonnets 
sink almost into inanity beneath the burden of 
quibbles and conceits. Take, for example : 

XLVI. 

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, 
How to divide the conquest of thy sight : 

Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar, 
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. 



27 

My heart doth plead, that thou in him dost lie, 

A closet never pierced with crystal eyes, 
But the defendant doth that plea deny, 

And says in him thy fair appearance lies. 
To 'cide this title is impanneled 

A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart ; 
And by their verdict is determined 

The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part : 
As thus ; mine eye's due is thine outward part. 
And my heart's right thine inward love of heart. 

There is no evidence that the order in which 
the sonnets were first printed followed the order 
in which they were written. The same train of 
thought is at times pursued continuously through 
two or more sonnets, and thus the collection 
resembles a series of independent poems, some 
in a varying number of fourteen-line stanzas. 
But, beyond the fact that the vein throughout 
is more or less amorous, there is no close logical 
continuity in the arrangement of the whole. The 
majority of the sonnets, numbered i. to cxxvi., 
are addressed to a young man, and most of 
the remaining twenty-six poems are addressed to 
a woman, but both groups include meditative 
soliloquies in the sonnet-form which are addressed 
to no person at all. 

The sonnets of Shakespeare's contemporaries 
were for the most part literary exercises, reflect- 
ing the influence of French and Italian sonneteers. 
Genuine emotion or the writer's personal experi- 
ence very rarely inspired them. At a first glance a 
far larger proportion of Shakespeare's sonnets give 
the reader the illusion of personal confessions than 
those of any contemporary, but when allowance has 
been made for the current conventions of Eliza- 
bethan sonneteering, as well as for Shakespeare's 
unapproached aflluence in dramatic instinct and 
invention — which enabled him to identify himself 
with every phase of human emotion — the autobio- 
graphic element in his sonnets, although it may not 
be dismissed alt^^^r, is seen to shrink to com- 



W 



28 

paratively slender proportions. He borrows very 
many contemporary sonneteers' words and thoughts, 
although he so fused them with his fancy as often 
to transfigure them. A personal note may have 
escaped him in the sonnets in which he gives 
voice to a sense of melancholy and self-remorse, 
but his dramatic instinct never slept, and there 
is no positive proof that he is doing more, even 
in those sonnets, than to produce dramatically the 
illusion of a personal confession. For example, 
in the numerous sonnets in which Shakespeare 
boasted that his verse was so certain of im- 
mortality that it was capable of immortalising the 
person to whom it was addressed, he gave voice 
to no involuntary exaltation of his own spirit or 
spontaneous ebullition of his own feeling. He 
was merely handling a theme that Ronsard and 
Desportes, emulating Pindar, Horace, Ovid, and 
other classical poets, had lately made a common- 
place of the poetry of Europe, and a formal topic 
among all English sonneteers. The imitative 
element is hardly less conspicuous in most of 
the sonnets that Shakespeare distinctly addresses 
to a woman. 

Only in one group, composed of six sonnets 
scattered through the collection, is there traceable 
a strand of wholly original sentiment, boldly pro- 
jecting from the web into which it is wrought. 
This series of six sonnets deals with a love- 
adventure of no normal type. Sonnet cxliv. opens 
with the lines : 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 

Which like two spirits do suggest [i. e. prompt] me still : 

The better angel is a man right fair, 

The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. 

The woman, the sonneteer continues, has corrupted 
the man and drawn him from his side. Five 
other sonnets treat the same theme. In three 
addressed to the man (xl., xli., and xlii.) the poet 
mildly reproaches his youtUftr^ friend for having 



itlkftrkfri 



29 

sought and won favours of a woman whom he 
himself loved ' dearly,' but the trespass is forgiven 
on account of the friend's youth and beauty. In 
the two remaining sonnets (cxxxiii. and cxxxiv.) 
the poet addresses the woman, and rebukes her for 
having enslaved not himself but 'his next self — 
his friend. It is conceivable that these six sonnets 
rest on a genuine experience of the poet, although 
a half-jesting reference to the amorous adventure, 
which would deprive it of very serious import, 
was possibly made to it at the time by a literary 
comrade. A poem that was licensed for publica- 
tion on September 3, 1594, was pubHshed immedi- 
ately under the title of Willobie his Avisa^ or the 
True Picture of a Modest Maid and of a Chaste 
and Constant Wife. There, a character, described 
as 'the old player W. S.,' doubtless Shakespeare 
himself, mocks a rejected lover because, he ex- 
plains at length, he has just recovered his own 
equanimity after much suffering from feminine 
caprice. 

But if few of Shakespeare's sonnets can safely 
be regarded as autobiographical revelations of 
sentiment, many of them offer evidence of the 
relations in which he stood to a patron, and of the 
position that he sought to fill in the circle of that 
patron's literary clients. There is no difficulty in 
detecting the lineaments of the Earl of South- 
ampton in those of the man who is distinctively 
greeted in the sonnets as the poet's sole patron. 
That the Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare's 
only patron is not merely suggested by the terms 
in which the poet dedicated to him each of his 
two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and 
Lucrece., but by the tradition handed down by 
Sir William D'Avenant that the earl treated 
Shakespeare with exceptional munificence, and 
'once gave him a thousand pounds to enable 
him to go through with a purchase which he 
heard he had a mind to.' Twenty sonnets are 
couched in the phraseology habitual at the 



30 

time to authors when penning dedications of 
their works to patrons. Three of these (xxvi., 
xxxii., and xxxvi.) merely translate into the 
language of poetry the expressions of devotion 
which had already done duty in the prose 
dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Southampton 
that prefaces Liicrece. That epistle to South- 
ampton runs : 

The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end : 
whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a super- 
fluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable 
disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes 
it assured of acceptance. What I have done is 
yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I 
have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty 
would show greater ; meanwhile, as it is, it is bound to 
your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened 
with all happiness. — Your lordship's in all duty, 

William Shakespeare. 

Sonnet xxvi. is a gorgeous rendering of these 
sentences : 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, 
To thee I send this written ambassage. 

To witness duty, not to show my wit : 
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine 

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it. 
But that I hope some good conceit of thine 

In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it ; 
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, 

Points on me graciously with fair aspect. 
And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving. 

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect : 
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee ; 
Till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me. 

In several sonnets the poet confesses to a sense 
of jealousy of one or more rival poets who, by 
dint of * richly compiled' 'comments' of his 
patron's 'praise,' threaten to divert to themselves 



31 

his patron's favours. The rival poets with their 
* precious praise by all the muses filed' (Ixxxv. 4) 
must be sought among the writers who eulogised 
Southampton and are known to have shared his 
patronage. Such writers were very numerous, but 
the poet whom Shakespeare depicts as his chief 
rival is with much probability identified with the 
young poet and scholar Barnabe Barnes, a poetic 
panegyrist of Southampton and a prolific sonneteer, 
whose promise, widely acknowledged at the time 
that Shakespeare was writing his sonnets, was not 
destined for conspicuous fulfilment in the future. 

Besides the twenty ' dedicatory ' sonnets, which 
specifically address a young man as the poet's 
patron, many avow wholly disinterested Move,' in 
the Elizabethan sense of friendship, for a handsome 
youth of wealth and rank. There is good ground 
for the conclusion that the sonnets of disinterested 
friendship also have Southampton for their subject. 
The sincerity of the poet's sentiment is often open 
to doubt in these poems, but they seem inspired 
by a genuine intimacy subsisting between Shake- 
speare and a young Mcecenas. Extravagant com- 
pliment — ' gross painting ' Shakespeare calls it — 
was more conspicuous in the intercourse of patron 
and client during the last years of Elizabeth's 
reign than in any other epoch. There is nothing 
in the vocabulary of affection which Shakespeare 
employed in his sonnets of ' love ' or friendship to 
conflict with the theory that they were inscribed 
to his literary patron Southampton, with whom 
he was at the moment on the terms of close inti- 
macy that normally subsisted between the literary 
clients and their patrons. Every compliment, in 
fact, paid by Shakespeare to the youth applies to 
Southampton. In real life, beauty, birth, wealth, 
and wit sat ^crowned' in the earl, whom poets 
acclaimed the handsomest of Elizabethan courtiers, 
as plainly as in the hero of the poet's verse. 
Southampton has left in his correspondence ample 
proofs of his literary learning and cultured taste, 



32 

and, like the hero of the sonnets, was *as fair in 
knowledge as in hue.' The opening sequence of 
seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and 
wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so 
that 'his fair house' may not fall into decay, can 
only have been addressed to a young peer like 
Southampton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast 
possessions, and was the sole male representative 
of his family. To no other peer of the day are the 
poet's words so exactly applicable. Striking evi- 
dence of the identity of the youth of the sonnets of 
'friendship' with Southampton is found in the like- 
ness of feature and complexion which characterises 
the poet's description of the youth's 'fair' outward 
appearance and the extant pictures of Southampton 
as a young man which are now at Welbeck. Ex- 
ternal evidence thus agrees with internal evidence 
in identifying the lauded patron of the sonnets 
with the Earl of Southampton, and they suggest 
that Shakespeare when his fame was in the making 
stood to the earl in much the same relation as 
Ariosto to the Duke Alfonso d'Este, or Ronsard 
to Margaret, Duchess of Savoy. 

Shakespeare's sonnets were first circulated in 
manuscript. A line from one of them — 

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds- - 

was quoted in the play of Edward IIL^ which 
was probably written before 1595. Meres, writing 
in 1598, enthusiastically commends Shakespeare's 
'sugred sonnets among his private friends,' and 
mentions them in close conjunction with his two 
narrative poems. William Jaggard piratically 
inserted in 1599 two of the most mature of the 
series (Nos. cxxxviii. and cxliv.) in his Passionate 
Pilgriin. In 1609 Shakespeare's sonnets were 
surreptitiously published by a publisher of small 
reputation, Thomas Thorpe. 

Thorpe dedicated the volume to ' Mr W. H.' in 
these terms : 



33 

TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF. 

THESE. INSVING. SONNETS. 

MR. W. H. ALL. HArPINESSE. 

AND. THAT. ETERNITIE. 

PROMISED. 

BY. 

OUR. EVER LIVING. POET. 

WISHETH. 

THE. WELL-WISHING. 

ADVENTVRER. IN. 

SETTING. 

FORTH. 

T. T. 

The dedication, although, according to Thorpe's 
habitual style of writing, bombastic in expression 
and wilfully intricate in the arrangement of the 
words, follows a common dedicatory formula : in 
numerous books of the day the dedicator Svisheth' 
his patron 'all happiness and eternitie.' In this 
instance ' the well-wishmg adventurer in setting 
forth'' — i.e. the publisher, Thomas Thorpe — ^ wish- 
eth^ in the conventional language of contemporary 
dedications, ' all happinesse and that eternitie pro- 
mised by our ever-living poef — i.e. such eternity 
as Shakespeare in the text of his sonnets foretold 
for his own verse — ' to Mr W. H. the onlie begetter 
of these ensuing sonnets^ — i.e. to the man who had, 
by his sole efforts, gotten or procured ('beget' in 
Elizabethan English was frequently used in the 
sense of ' get ' or ' procure ') a copy of the manuscript 
of Shakespeare's sonnets, and had thereby given 
Thorpe his opportunity of printing and publishing 
them. In 1600 Thorpe had under similar circum- 
stances dedicated a hitherto unpublished work by 
Marlowe — The First Book of Lucan — to Edward 
Blount, a friend in the trade. ' Mr W. H.,' whom 
Thorpe made the patron of the original edition 
of Shakespeare's sonnets in 1609, was probably 
William Hall, a publisher's assistant, who for some 
years occupied himself in procuring unprinted 
manuscripts for disposal among stationers in the 
position of Thorpe. 

3 



34 

The common practice of publishers of the day 
of the type of Thorpe in choosing uninfluential 
patrons for the pubHcation of manuscripts that 
fell surreptitiously into their hands renders im- 
possible the popular identification of ' Mr W. H.' 
with the influential young man to whom many 
of the sonnets were anonymously addressed by 
Shakespeare. By an irresponsible guess, which 
is vitiated by an obvious error, the initials of 
Thorpe's patron have been identified with those of 
William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke. The 
Earl of Pembroke succeeded to his title in 1601, 
and it was contrary to law and custom for a 
dependent in the position of a publisher to employ 
any other than the formal designation in ad- 
dressing a noble patron. The letters 'W. H.,' 
moreover, at no time in the Earl of Pembroke's 
life represented the initials of his name. From his 
birth until his succession to his father's title he 
was known solely as Lord Herbert. No evidence 
exists to show that Shakespeare was in personal 
relations with the Earl of Pembroke at any period. 
After Shakespeare's death the First Folio (1623) 
was dedicated to Pembroke and his brother, the 
Earl of Montgomery, by Shakespeare's friends and 
theatrical colleagues. It was the fashion of the 
moment for authors and publishers to dedicate to 
these patrons jointly publications of importance. 
Pembroke, too, was in 1623 Lord Chamberlain and 
ex officio controller of the stage. The words and 
tone in which Shakespeare's posthumous editors 
addressed the brothers plainly show that the poet 
was in his lifetime solely known to the brother- 
earls — was solely the object of their favour — 
in his capacity of popular dramatist and of 
'servant' of the king — i.e. of member of the 
king's company of players. 

IV. Shakespeare's endeavours to maintain his 
position in the favour of a wealthy patron, to 
which his sonnets bear testimony, never interrupted 
the Hterary labours to which the best years of his 



35 

life were consecrated. His industry never drooped. 
To the winter season of 1595 probably belonged 
A Midsunwier Nighfs Dreani^ which may well 
have been written to celebrate a marriage in the 
circles of the court. Hints for the plot and 
characters have been traced to many sources, 
but the final scheme of the beautiful and deli- 
cate fairy comedy is of Shakespeare's freshest 
invention. Titania's directions when bidding the 
fairies attend on the translated' Bottom are 
instinct with the finest conceivable play of fancy 
(Act III. sc. i. 11. 150-160) : 

Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; 
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes ; 
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries ; 
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, 
And for night- tapers crop their waxen thighs, 
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes. 
To have my love to bed and to arise ; 
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies. 
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes : 
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. 

Airs Well that Ends Well belongs to the same 
period. Its plot is a sombre and somewhat 
offensive story traceable to Boccaccio. Shake- 
speare's treatment of it is mainly remarkable for 
his development of the character of the heroine, 
Helena, who, despite the immodesty of her actions, 
ranks with the greatest of Shakespeare's female 
creations. Her secret attachment for the worth- 
less Bertram, whose rank places him beyond her 
reach, is touchingly expressed in her soliloquy 
(Act I. sc. i. 11. 76-92) : 

My imagination 
Carries no favour in 't but Bertram's. 
I am undone : there is no living, none. 
If Bertram be away. 'Twere all one 
That I should love a bright particular star 
And think to wed it, he is so above me : 
In his bright radiance and collateral light 



36 

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere : 

The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: 

The hind that would be mated by the lion 

Must die for love. 'Tv^^as pretty, though a plague, 

To see him every hour ; to sit and draw 

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, 

In our heart's table ; heart too capable 

Of every line and trick of his sweet favour : 

But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy 

Must sanctify his reliques. 

The Taming of the Shrew^ which is mainly of 
farcical character, was based on an old farcical 
comedy, The Taming of a Shrew^ first published 
in 1574. The underplot of Bianca and her lovers 
was probably due to a coadjutor. In Shakespeare's 
Induction, of which the drunken tinker Christopher 
Sly is the hero, Shakespeare introduces many 
literal references to Stratford and his native county. 
Similar references figure in the Second Part of 
Henry IV. and in The Merry Wives of Windsor^ 
which followed the Taming of the Shrew at no 
long interval. Such allusions are probably attri- 
butable to Shakespeare's resumption of relations 
with his native place at the time of the composi- 
tion. 

In 1597, turning again to English history, he 
produced the two parts of Henry IV. Although in 
the First Part the character of Hotspur is drawn 
with great vividness, and in both parts Prince Hal 
is depicted with unflagging spirit, the two pieces 
owe the enthusiastic affection in which they have 
been held since their first production on the stage 
to Shakespeare's creation of the deathless charac- 
ter of Falstaff. In Falstaff, Shakespeare's purely 
comic power culminated. Every syllable of his 
utterances should be studied. Probably his rich- 
ness of temperament may be gauged, as well as 
anywhere, by the shrewdly comic speech which he 
mockingly addresses to Prince Hal in his assumed 
character of the king. Prince Hal's father (Act li. 
sc. iv. 11. 387-418). His assumption of the kingly 



37 

role justly evokes from Mistress Quickly the 
characteristic compliment, ' O Jesu I he doth it as 
like one of those harlotry players as ever I see' : 

J^a/. Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest 
thy time, but also how thou art accompanied : for 
though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the 
faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the 
sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly 
thy mother's word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a 
villanous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy 
nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son 
to me, here lies the point ; why, being son to me, art 
thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven 
prove a micher and eat blackberries ? a question not to 
be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief and 
take purses ? a question to be asked. There is a thing, 
Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known 
to many in our land by the name of pitch : this pitch, 
as ancient writers do report, doth defile ; so doth the 
company thou keepest : for, Harry, now I do not speak 
to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in pas- 
sion, not in words only, but in woes also : and yet there 
is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy com- 
pany, but I know not his name. 

Prince. What manner of man, an it like your majesty ? 

Fal. A goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent ; 
of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble 
carriage ; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r lady, 
inclining to three score ; and now I remember me, his 
name is Falstaff : if that man should be lewdly given, he 
deceiveth me ; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If 
then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by 
the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in 
that Falstaff: him keep with, the rest banish. And tell 
me now, thou naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou 
been this month ? 

Henry IV. was followed by The Merry Wives of 
Windsor^ which, according to early traditions, was 
designed to satisfy Queen Elizabeth's curiosity to 
learn how Falstaff would bear himself when in love. 
The result was a farcical comedy reflecting the 
bluff temper of contemporary middle-class society* 



38 

At the same time, the spirited character of Prince 
Hal was specially congenial to Shakespeare, and 
after devoting one play to Falstaff, he devoted 
another to the later career of the prince who 
succeeded to the throne as Henry V. Shake- 
speare's chronicle-play of He7iry V. was produced 
in 1599, probably at the newly-built Globe Theatre. 
It abounds in patriotic sentiment. Most of the 
speeches of the hero are familiar in anthologies. 
The soliloquy of the king on the emptiness of the 
ceremonial homage that is paid to royalty, the 
orations in which he condemns the conspirators 
Cambridge, Grey, and Scroop, or reproves his 
cousin Westmoreland for regretting the smallness 
of the English force on the eve of Agincourt, are 
masterly specimens of spirited eloquence. The 
choruses before the acts, too — notably the first — are 
splendidly phrased, and there is abundant variety 
in the comic element, although it lacks the great 
presence of Falstaff. When Pistol announces to 
his companions : 

For Falstaff he is dead, 
And we must yearn therefore, 

the disreputable Bardolph remarks, with a won- 
derful touch of pathos, 'Would I were with him 
wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell.' 
The hostess opens her description of the hero's 
last hours thus (Act ll. sc. iii. 1. 9) : 

Nay, sure, he's not in hell : he's in Arthur's bosom, 
if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made a finer 
end and went away an it had been any christom child ; 
a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the 
turning o' the tide : for after I saw him fumble with the 
sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' 
ends, I knew there was but one way ; for his nose was 
as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 

Henry V. completed the series of Shakespeare^s 
Histories^ which may be likened to detached books 
of an English Iliad. They form collectively a kind 



39 

of national epic. The late play of Henry VIII., 
which is only partially by Shakespeare, must be 
considered apart. 

Some reflections of the public affairs in which 
Shakespeare had personal interest appear in 
Henry V. In the chorus before the last act of 
the play Shakespeare makes friendly allusion to 
the expected return from Ireland of the Earl of 
Essex, the close friend of his patron, the Earl of 
Southampton. Subsequently, in 1601, Essex and 
Southampton w^ere leaders in a rebellion against 
the queen's authority in London, with the result 
that Essex was executed and Southampton received 
a sentence of imprisonment for life. Shakespeare 
thus lost a generous patron, but by the end of 
the sixteenth century his career was in the full 
tide of its triumphant progress. In literary and 
theatrical society his influence was then supreme. 
He was in a position to befriend younger men of 
genius like Ben Jonson, and was a prominent figure 
in the meetings of Jonson and his literary asso- 
ciates at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street. 
In 1598 Francis Meres, a learned graduate of 
Cambridge, writing of contemporary literature in 
his Palladis Tainia^ eulogised Shakespeare as the 
greatest man of letters of the day: 'The Muses 
would speak Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they 
could speak English.' Unprincipled pubHshers 
placed Shakespeare's name on the title-pages of 
books by other pens in order to attract purchasers. 
Between 1595 and 1608 six plays in which he had 
no hand — Locrine^ Thomas Lord Cromwell^ The 
Puritan^ Oldcastle^ The Londo7t Prodigal^ and The 
Yorkshire Tragedy — came forth with Shakespeare's 
name or initials on the title-pages. The pirate 
publisher, William Jaggard, produced in 1599 a 
poetic anthology, entitled The Passionate Pilgrim^ 
' by W. Shakespeare,' although only five out of the 
twenty pieces were from the poet's pen. Obscure 
mystical verses, on the Phcenix and the Turtle 
which may be genuine work of Shakespeare's, 



40 

were printed above his full signature in 1601, 
with poems by other writers of note, in Robert 
Chester's Love's Martyr. 

V. Meanwhile Shakespeare had resumed rela- 
tions with Stratford. He was doubtless there on 
August II, 1596, when his only son Hamnet was 
buried in the parish church. Thenceforth he 
devoted much of his energies to endeavours to 
restore the fame and fortune of his family in his 
native place, and though he continued to spend the 
greater part of many subsequent years in London, 
he thenceforth paid more than one visit annually 
to Stratford. His father's debts had grown in his 
long absence, and his wife had also borrowed 
money for her support. But his return finally 
relieved his kindred of all pecuniary anxiety. By 
his advice his father, at the end of 1596, applied 
to the College of Heralds in London for a grant 
of arms. The negotiations were protracted through 
three years, but in 1599 the authorities acceded to 
the request of the poet and his father, assigning 
to the family a 'gold shield with a bend sable 
bearing a golden spear, with a crest of a falcon 
with wings displayed (silver), supporting a spear 
(gold).' The motto ran, ' Non sa?tz droict,^ These 
arms were thenceforth used by the poet and his 
children. By way of corroborating his position, 
he purchased on May 4, 1597, the largest house 
in Stratford, called New Place. 

In 1598 three letters, written by Shakespeare's 
fellow-townsmen, and still extant at Stratford, 
give evidence of his local reputation as a man of 
wealth and influence. One letter, dated October 
25? 1598, is an appeal addressed to Shakespeare 
by Richard Quiney for a loan of ^30. The 
financial prosperity which is indicated in the 
correspondence is readily traceable to Shake- 
speare's professional earnings, although his wealthy 
patron, Southampton, is said to have supplemented 
them in his early years by generous gifts. Before 
1599 he wrote nineteen plays, besides revising 



41 

dramatic work by other pens. After 1599 he wrote 
eighteen plays. Such extensive Hterary work 
probably brought him on the average at least 
£35 ^ year, equivalent to some ^300 in modern 
currency. But Shakespeare was also an actor, and 
actors' salaries were high ; from that source Shake- 
speare must, according to the current rates of 
remuneration, have derived an average income of 
;£i3o, exceeding ^1000 in modern currency. Sub- 
sequently a third source of income was added. 
When, in the winter of 1598, the Globe Theatre was 
built, the proprietors presented Shakespeare with a 
substantial share in the profits, which were always 
large and always increasing. Towards the close 
of his life he was also allotted a share in the 
receipts of the Blackfriars Theatre, but it was from 
the Globe that he, as part-owner, actor, and dra- 
matist, clearly derived, when at the zenith of his 
career, an ample and substantial income. In the 
later years of his life he could not have earned 
less than ^600 a year. It was reported at the 
time that 'he spent at the rate of ^1000.' Part of 
his professional revenues he invested in real pro- 
perty at Stratford. In 1602 he purchased for ^320 
one hundred and seven acres of arable land near the 
town, as well as a cottage and garden adjoining 
New Place. In 1610 he acquired twenty acres of 
pasture. Meanwhile, in 1605, he bought for ;£44o 
an unexpired term of a lease of a moiety of the 
Stratford tithes. This negotiation involved him in 
some legal embarrassments, but, as is common 
among men of wealth, Shakespeare stood rigor- 
ously by his rights in all his business relations, and 
often appeared as plaintiff in the local courts. 

The calls of business never, however, impeded 
Shakespeare's literary activity. Despite the some- 
what complicated financial transactions in which 
he was engaged at the time at Stratford, it was in 
1599 that he composed his three most finished 
and most characteristic comedies. Much Ado about 
Nothings As You Like It^ and Twelfth Night, 



42 

In each there are almost as much serious episode 
and earnest reflection as humorous jest, badinage, 
and comic dialogue. The sad central story of 
Hero and Claudio in Much Ado is of Italian 
origin, but the brilliant comedy of Benedick and 
Beatrice and the quaint humour of the watch- 
man Dogberry and Verges are wholly original. 
As You Like It^ a pastoral comedy with excep- 
tionally varied drainatis personce^ was adapted 
from Lodge's romance of Rosalind. The smaller 
characters are as well worthy of study as the 
greater. The lips of the shepherdess Phebe — 
a very subordinate character — for example, echo 
with rare fidelity the accents of the perennial 
village coquette ; her reminiscence of her inter- 
view with Ganymede is as finely pointed as any 
speech in the play (Act ill. sc. v. 11. 108-138) : 

Phebe. Think not I love him, though I ask for him ; 
'Tis but a peevish boy ; yet he talks well ; 
But what care I for words ? yet words do well 
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. 
It is a pretty youth : not very pretty : 
But, sure, he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him : 
He'll make a proper man : the best thing in him 
Is his complexion ; and faster than his tongue 
Did make offence his eye did heal it up. 
He is not very tall ; yet for his years he's tall : 
His leg is but so so ; and yet 'tis well : 
There was a pretty redness in his lip, 
A little riper and more lusty red 

Than that mix'd in his cheek ; 'twas just the difference 
Betwixt the constant red, and mingled damask. 
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him 
In parcels as I did, would have gone near 
To fall in love with him : but, for my part, 
I love him not nor hate him not ; and yet 
I have more cause to hate him than to love him : 
For what had he to do to chide at me ? 
He said mine eyes were black and my hair black ; 
And, now I am remember'd, scorn'd at me : 
I marvel why I answer'd not again : 
But that's all one ; omittance is no quittance. 



43 

I'll write to him a very taunting letter, 
And thou shalt bear it : wilt thou, Silvius ? 

Silvitis. Phebe, with all my heart. 

Phebe. I'll write it straight ; 
The matter 's in my head and in my heart : 
I will be bitter with him and passing short. 
Go with me, Silvius. 

Twelfth Nighty like Much Ado^ is indebted to 
an Italian story. Though probably written about 
1600, the earliest reference to it was made by 
Henry Manningham, a barrister of the Middle 
Temple, who described a performance of the piece 
at the hall of his Inn on February 2, 1602. The 
leading themes of Viola's passion for the Duke 
Orsino, and the Duke's passion for Olivia, belong 
to serious romance, and a pathetic note infects 
the humorous characterisation of Malvolio, whose 
vanity almost issues in a tragic denouement ; but 
Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria 
are conceived wholly in the comic vein. In Twelfth 
Nighty as in Much Ado and As You Like It^ 
Shakespeare's lyric genius showed itself in per- 
fection. The songs with which the three plays 
are interspersed include the verses ( Twelfth Nighty 
Act II. sc. iii. 1. 38) : 

O mistress mine, where are you roaming ? 
O, stay and hear ; your true love 's coming, 

That can sing both high and low : 
Trip no further, pretty sweeting ; 
Journeys end in lovers meeting, 

Every wise man's son doth know. 

What is love ? 'tis not hereafter ; 
Present mirth hath present laughter ; 

What's to come is still unsure : 
In delay there lies no plenty ; 
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, 

Youth's a stuff will not endure. 

In 1601 Shakespeare made a new departure by 
dramatising an incident in Roman history — the 
death of Julius Caesar — which he read in North's 



44 

noble translation of Pliitarch^s Lives. The play 
of Julius CcEsar is a penetrating study of political 
life and character. The dramatis personal are 
balanced and contrasted with minutest care. 
Hardly a better example of the Shakesperean 
power of making a speaker reveal, as it were, 
unconsciously and unpremeditatedly his true 
quality could be quoted than the speech in which 
Caesar hints to Antonius his suspicious fear of 
Cassius, and thereby betrays his own degeneracy 
(Act I. sc. ii. 11. 192-214) : 

Ccesar. Let me have men about me that are fat, 
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights : 
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look ; 
He thinks too much : such men are dangerous. 

Antonius. Fear him not, Caesar ; he's not dangerous ; 
He is a noble Roman, and well given. 

Ccesar. Would he were fatter ! but I fear him not : 
Yet if my name were liable to fear, 
I do not know the man I should avoid 
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much ; 
He is a great observer, and he looks 
Quite through the deeds of men : he loves no plays, 
As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music : 
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort 
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit 
That could be moved to smile at any thing. 
Such men as he be never at heart's ease 
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, 
And therefore are they very dangerous. 
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd 
Than what I fear ; for always I am Caesar. 
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf. 
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him. 

Soon after the production oi Julius Ccesar., Shake- 
speare's theatrical prospects, like those of others 
engaged in theatrical enterprise in London, were 
for a time somewhat seriously imperilled. In 1600 
the Puritans of the city of London, who were 
always hostile to the theatres, sought to induce the 
Privy Council to forbid the continuance of more 



45 

than two playhouses in Middlesex and Surrey, but 
though the Council issued a prohibition in accord- 
ance with the Puritan citizens' wish, it was suffered 
to remain inoperative. More threatening was the 
sudden popularity which companies of boy actors 
in London suddenly acquired in the sight of play- 
goers in the winter of 1600. In the following 
year Shakespeare described in his new play of 
Hamlet how the boys' performances absorbed the 
favour of the playgoers of London, and how the 
theatres which were in the hands of the men 
actors were for the time deserted. Shakespeare's 
perverse-tempered friend, Ben Jonson, further 
complicated the situation by throwing in his lot 
with the boys, for whom he wrote plays that were 
rapturously received by the public. But the 
vogue of the boys, with which Shakespeare was 
naturally out of sympathy, declined as rapidly 
as it had risen. Its fall may partly be attributed 
to the triumphant success with which Shake- 
speare's great tragedy of Havilet was first pro- 
duced by the men players in 1602. An old play 
on the same subject is lost, but from it Shakespeare 
probably derived useful hints. The story belongs 
to Danish history, and had been adapted by 
Bandello, whose version was accessible to Shake- 
speare in the French rendering by Belleforest. 
The piece, which is mainly a psychological study, 
is the longest of Shakespeare's plays, but the 
intensity of interest with which Shakespeare in- 
vested the subtle character of the hero rendered 
the tragedy the most popular of all his productions. 
In numerous familiar soliloquies Hamlet reveals 
the course of the struggle proceeding within his 
brain between his irresistible tendency to intro- 
spective meditation and his consciousness of the 
pressing need for action, which the working of his 
mind deprived him of the power of taking. The 
internal conflict is nowhere so forcibly depicted 
as when the young prince meets a detachment of 
the army of Fortinbras, and a captain tells him that 



46 

they are on their way to fight the Poles (Act. iv. 
sc. iv. 11. 18-19), 

To gain a little patch of ground 
That hath in it no profit but the name. 

The callous admission of so unsubstantial an in- 
citement to action stirs in Hamlet this torturing 
reflection on his own habit of inaction (Act iv. 
sc. iv. 11. 32-66) : 

How all occasions do inform against me, 

And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 

If his chief good and market of his time 

Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more. 

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, 

Looking before and after, gave us not 

That capability and god-like reason 

To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be 

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 

Of thinking too precisely on the event, — 

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom 

And ever three parts coward, — I do not know 

Why yet I live to say ' This thing's to do,' 

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means 

To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me : 

Witness this army, of such mass and charge, 

Led by a delicate and tender prince, 

Whose spirit with divine ambition pufif'd 

Makes mouths at the invisible event. 

Exposing what is mortal and unsure 

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare. 

Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great 

Is not to stir without great argument, 

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 

When honour 's at the stake. How stand I then, 

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, 

Excitements of my reason and my blood. 

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see 

The imminent death of twenty thousand men. 

That for a fantasy and trick of fame 

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot 

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 

Which is not tomb enough and continent 

To hide the slain ! O, from this time forth. 

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth ! 



47 

Troilus a7td Cressida^ although pubHshed for the 
first time in 1609, belongs to the same period as 
Ha77ilet. It is based on a mediaeval story of the 
Trojan war, and is little influenced by the classical 
spirit. The heroine, Cressida, contrary to literary 
tradition, is represented by Shakespeare as a 
heartless coquette. The speeches of the Greek 
generals abound in pithily expressed philosophy 
of universal application. Especially notable are 
the eloquent meditations of Ulysses. Nowhere 
else has the doctrine of the inevitableness of 
rank in the physical, political, and social worlds, 
or the need of a due observance of it, been 
set forth with greater nobility of language than 
in the speech which Ulysses addresses to his 
colleagues in the Grecian camp before Agamem- 
non's tent (Act I. sc. iii. 11. 75-137) : 

Ulysses, Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down 
And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master, 
But for these instances. 
The specialty of rule hath been neglected : 
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand 
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. 
When that the general is not like the hive 
To whom the foragers shall all repair. 
What honey is expected ? Degree being vizarded, 
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. 
The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre, 
Observe degree, priority and place, 
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 
OfBce and custom, in all line of order : 
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol 
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered 
Amidst the other ; whose medicinable eye 
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, 
And posts like the commandment of a king. 
Sans check to good and bad : but when the planets 
In evil mixture to disorder wander, 
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny, 
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth, 
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors, 
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate 
The unity and married calm of states 



48 

Quite from their fixture ! O, when degree is shaked, 

Which is the ladder to all high designs, 

The enterprise is sick ! How could communities, 

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, 

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 

The primogenitive and due of birth. 

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, 

But by degree, stand in authentic place ? 

Take but degree away, untune that string. 

And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing meets 

In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters 

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores. 

And make a sop of all this solid globe : 

Strength should be lord of imbecility. 

And the rude son should strike his father dead : 

Force should be right ; or rather, right and wrong. 

Between whose endless jar justice resides. 

Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 

Then every thing includes itself in power. 

Power into will, will into appetite ; 

And appetite, an universal wolt. 

So doubly seconded with will and power. 

Must make perforce an universal prey. 

And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, 

This chaos, when degree is suffocate. 

Follows the choking. 

And this neglection of degree it is 

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose 

It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd 

By him one step below ; he by the next ; 

That next by him beneath : so every step, 

Exampled by the first pace that is sick 

Of his superior, grows to an envious fever 

Of pale and bloodless emulation : 

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot. 

Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, 

Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength. 

Hardly less penetrating are the same speaker's 
reflections on the tendency of human nature to 
value what is new to the neglect of the good that 
is old, when he reminds Achilles that his early 
fame cannot resist the advance of Ajax's newer- 
born reputation (Act ill. sc. iii. 11. 145-153) : 



49 

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back 

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, 

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes : 

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd 

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 

As done : perseverance, dear my lord. 

Keeps honour bright : to have done, is to hang 

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 

In monumental mockery. 



VI. On March 24, 1603, Queen Elizabeth died. 
Although she had proved an appreciative patron of 
Shakespeare, her successor, James L, show^ed him 
and his associates far more pronounced favour. 
Very soon after his accession James bestowed on 
the company of actors to which Shakespeare be- 
longed the title of the King's Servants, and gave 
them the rank of grooms of the royal chamber. 
Thenceforth Shakespeare and his colleagues took 
part in all great court festivities, while Shake- 
speare's plays were repeatedly performed in the 
royal presence. 

During the first six years of the new reign 
Shakespeare was engaged on his greatest achieve- 
ments in tragedy. Othello seems to have been 
the first new piece by Shakespeare that was acted 
before James, and it was quickly followed by 
Measure for Measure. The stories of both come 
originally from an Italian collection of romances, 
the Hecatommithi of Cinthio. Cinthio's story ot 
Measure for Measure was accessible in both 
French and English, but Othello is not known 
to have been translated out of the Italian before 
Shakespeare treated it. With masterly genius 
Shakespeare reconstructed leading episodes in both 
romances. Othello displayed his fully-matured 
powers to splendid advantage. An unfaltering 
equilibrium is maintained in the treatment of plot 
and character alike. Almost every sentence in 
Othello's dying speech has become proverbial 
(Act V. sc. ii. 11. 341-359) : 
4 



so 

Soft you ; a word or two before you go. 

I have done the state some service, and they know't. 

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, 

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, 

Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, 

Nor set down aught in malice : then must you speak 

Of one that loved not wisely but too well ; 

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, 

Perplex'd in the extreme ; of one whose hand. 

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away 

Richer than all his tribe ; of one whose subdued eyes, 

Albeit unused to the melting mood, 

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this ; 

And say besides, that in Aleppo once. 

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk 

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, 

I took him by the throat, the circumcised dog. 

And smote him, thus. [Stabs hi7?iself. 

Measure for Measure^ which deals mainly with 
the virtue of chastity, contains one of the finest 
scenes (between Angelo and Isabella, Act ii. 
sc. ii. 1. 43 seq.) and one of the greatest speeches 
(Claudio on the fear of death. Act ill. sc. i. 
11. 1 19-133) in the range of Shakespearean drama. 
Claudio's speech, very human if very cowardly, 
runs : 

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
Of those that lawless and incertain thought 
Imagine howling : — 'tis too horrible ! 
The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature is a paradise 
To what we fear of death. 



51 

Macbeth is on the same lofty level of tragic art 
as Othello. The subject, drawn from Scottish 
history, especially appealed to King James and his 
court. It is the shortest of all Shakespeare's 
tragedies, and the most rapid in action. Very 
sure and very subtle is the revelation of character 
offered by Shakespeare's portraits of Macbeth 
and his wife. In the hero there is a peculiar 
mingling of covetous ambition and reckless 
physical courage, with a highly developed imagi- 
native faculty which lends his utterance in the 
catastrophe of his career a weird splendour of 
phrase at the same time that it invests it with 
strange aloofness of feeling. He receives the 
crushing news of the death of his wife, on whose 
strength of will and practical temperament his 
action in former seasons of crisis wholly depended, 
thus (Act V. sc. V. 11. 1 5-28) : 

Macbeth. Wherefore was that cry ? 

Seyton. The queen, my lord, is dead. 

Macbeth. She should have died hereafter ; 
There would have been a time for such a word. 
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. 

King Lear.^ the most heart-rending of all Shake- 
speare's tragedies, was acted at court on December 
26, 1606. It was based on a legend of British 
history, but Shakespeare so re-created the story 
that all the pity and terror of which tragedy is 
capable reached their climax in his treatment of it. 
There is awful beauty in the speeches of the 
demented king in the concluding scenes. The 



52 

words which lead up to his recognition of his 
daughter CordeHa are unsurpassable in their 
pathos (Act IV. sc. vii. II. 59-70) : 

Pray do not mock me : 
1 am a very foolish fond old man, 
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less ; 
And, to deal plainly, 
I fear I am not perfect in my mind. 
Methinks I should know you and know this man ; 
Yet I am doubtful ; for I am mainly ignorant 
What place this is, and all the skill I have 
Remembers not these garments, nor I know not 
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me ; 
For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
To be my child Cordelia. 

Ti7no7i of Aike?ts^ although the hero was cast in 
the mould of Lear, falls far short of its three pre- 
decessors. Shakespeare was not responsible for 
the whole. Nearly all Acts iii. and v. came from 
an inferior pen. The coadjutor may possibly have 
been George W^ilkins, who may safely be credited 
with aiding Shakespeare in the romantic play of 
Pericles at the same date (1607-1608). Only Acts 
iii. and v. and part of Act iv. of Pericles can 
confidently be assigned to the great dramatist, 
but these scenes form a self-contained whole, and 
are characterised by a matured felicity of expres- 
sion. Witness the simple lament of Marina, the 
desolate heroine, while scattering flowers on her 
nurse's grave (Act iv. sc. i. 11. 13-20) : 

No, I will rob Tellus of her weed. 

To strew thy green with flowers : the yellows, blues, 

The purple violets, and marigolds. 

Shall, as a carpet, hang upon thy grave. 

While summer days do last. Ay me ! poor maid. 

Born in a tempest, when my mother died, 

This world to me is like a lasting storm. 

Whirring me from my friends. 

Of like calibre are the words of Pericles when 
his daughter Marina, whom he thinks to be dead, 
presents herself to him (Act v. sc. i. 11. 106-112) : 



53 

My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one 

My daughter might have been : my queen's square brows ; 

Her stature to an inch ; as wand-Uke straight, 

As silver-voic'd ; her eyes as jewel-Uke 

And cas'd as richly ; in pace another Juno, 

Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry, 

The more she gives them speech. 

Pericles was published in 1608. On the same 
day that license for its publication was obtained, 
a more impressive piece of literature, Antojiy a7id 
Cleopatra^ was announced to be also ready for 
the press, although its publication w^as delayed for 
fifteen years. For the plot of Anto7iy and Cleo- 
patra Shakespeare had recourse again to North's 
translation of Plutarch. To the theme he brought 
all his vitalising power, and the tragedy marks the 
zenith of his achievement. The irresistible spell 
that it exerts on readers justifies the application 
to it of the familiar words in which Enobarbus 
describes the heroine (Act il. sc. ii. 11. 239-242) : 

Age cannot wither her, nor custom. stale 
Her infinite variety : other women cloy 
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 
Where most she satisfies. 

Antony and Cleopatra was most worthily followed 
at no long interval by Coriolanus^ which also owes 
its birth to Shakespeare's study of North's trans- 
lation of Plutarch, Despite the austere temper 
of the play, the dramatic interest is in Coriolanus 
sustained as unflaggingly as in Othello. 

Coriolanus was Shakespeare's last excursion 
into the true realms of tragedy. The three latest 
plays that came from his unaided pen, Cy77tbeline^ 
Winter's Tale^ and The Tempest^ belong to a cate- 
gory of their own, apart alike from comedy and 
tragedy. Though many of the episodes are poig- 
nantly pathetic, all end happily, and their tone is 
throughout placid and tranquil, in marked contrast 
with the tempestuous temper of the great series 
of plays immediately preceding them. The first 



54 

of the concluding trinity, Cy^nbeline^ is especially 
notable for the fascination of the heroine, Imogen, 
the crown and flower of Shakespeare's female 
characters. The story is freely adapted from 
Holinshed's Chroiticle of British History^ inter- 
woven with a story from Boccaccio. The play 
contains the splendid dirge, * Fear no more the 
heat o' the sun,' which clothes the most solemn 
sentiment in a lyric garb of exceptional verbal and 
metrical simplicity (Act IV. sc. ii. 11. 259-282) : 

Gtiiderius. Fear no more the heat o' the sun, 

Nor the furious winter's rages ; 

Thou thy worldly task hast done, 

Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages : 
Golden lads and girls all must, 
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. 

A-i-viragiis, Fear no more the frown o' the great ; 

Thou art past the tyrant's stroke ; 
Care no more to clothe and eat ; 

To thee the reed is as the oak : 
The sceptre, learning, physic, must 
All follow this and come to dust. 

Gui. Fear no more the lightning- flash, 
A7'v. Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone ; 
Qui. Fear not slander, censure rash ; 
A7'V. Thou hast finish'd joy and moan : 
Both. All lovers young, all lovers must 
Consign to thee, and come to dust. 

Gtii. No exorciser harm thee ! 
Arv. Nor no witchcraft charm thee ! 
Gui. Ghost unlaid forbear thee ! 
Arv. Nothing ill come near thee ! 
Both. Quiet consummation have ; 
And renowned be thy grave ! 

The Winter's Tale was witnessed at the Globe 
Theatre on May 15, 161 1, by a playgoer, Dr Simon 
Forman, who placed the fact on record, but the 
piece was doubtless produced in the preceding 
winter. The story was drawn from a popular 
romance of Pa?tdosto by Shakespeare's early foe, 



55 

Robert Greene, but Shakespeare introduced many 
changes. The thievish peddler, Autolycus, is his 
own invention, and into his roguish mouth are 
placed some of the most spirited of Shakespeare's 
lyrics (cf. Act IV. sc. ii. 11. 1-12). At the same 
time the pastoral incident throughout the Winter's 
Tale is the freshest of all Shakespeare's presen- 
tations of country life ; witness Perdita's beautiful 
speeches at the sheep-shearing feast (Act iv. 
sc. iii. 1. 70 scq.)^ which include lines (i 18-128) 
like these : 

Daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses, 
That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips and 
The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds, 
The flower-de-luce being one ! O, these I lack, 
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend, 
To strew him o'er and o'er ! 

The Tempest^ probably written in 161 1, was 
suggested by the shipwreck off the hitherto un- 
known Bermuda Islands in the summer of 1609 
of a fleet bound for the Indies. The islands were 
currently reported by the surviving mariners to 
be the home of mysterious sounds and devils. 
It is clear that Shakespeare studied many recent 
pamphlets which reported the wreck of the fleet, 
but at the same time he incorporated in the 
Tempest the result of study of other books of 
travel in the New World. Nowhere did Shake- 
speare give rein to his imagination with more 
imposing effect than in the Teinpest. The tone 
is marked at all points by great solemnity of 
thought, and endeavours have been made to 
represent it as a conscious effort in metaphysics 
rather than a work of poetic fancy. There is little 
ground to justify a metaphysical interpretation. 



56 

Shakespeare was merely developing with the in- 
creased seriousness of middle life some dramatic 
themes and characters with which he had already 
dealt less perfectly in earlier ventures. Miranda is 
of the school of Marina of Pericles and of Perdita 
of the Wi7iter's Tale. Ariel belongs to the world of 
Puck in A Midsummer Nighfs Drea7n^ although the 
later delineation is in the severer colours that were 
habitual to Shakespeare's maturity. Caliban is an 
imaginary portrait, conceived with matchless vigour 
and vividness, of the aboriginal savage of the New 
World, of whom Shakespeare had read in travellers' 
tales or heard from their lips. Prospero, the guid- 
ing providence of the romance, has been fancifully 
identified with Shakespeare himself, who probably 
bade farewell in the Tempest to the enchanted 
work of his life. There is no just ground for the 
identification. The conditions of the story and of 
Prospero's character fully account for his magnani- 
mous renunciation of his magical faculty as soon 
as by its exercise he had restored his shattered 
fortunes. Prospero's words of renunciation run 
(Act V. sc. i. 11. 33-57) : 

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back ; you demi-puppets that 
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make. 
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime 
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice 
To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid — 
Weak masters though ye be — I have bedimm'd 
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, 
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault 
Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder 
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory 
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up 
The pine and cedar : graves at my command 
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth 
By my so potent art. But this rough magic 
I here abjure ; and, when I have required 



57 

Some heavenly music — which even now I do — 
To work mine end upon their senses, that 
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, 
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
And deeper than did ever plummet sound 
I'll drown my book. 

VII. Although Shakespeare abandoned dramatic 
composition in 1611, or thereabouts, he left with 
the manager of his company unfinished drafts 
of more than one play, which at a later date 
other dramatists were commissioned to complete. 
Shakespeare's place at the head of the acting 
dramatists of the day was taken by John Fletcher, 
and it was he, with occasional aid from another 
distinguished writer, Philip Massinger, who put 
the finishing touches to Shakespeare's uncom- 
pleted work. One of the plays which is known 
to have been due to this copartnership is lost. It 
was called Cardenio^ and w^as based on a story 
in Cervantes' novel of Do7t Quixote^ the first part 
of which was originally published in an English 
ranslation in 161 2. Two other pieces. The Two 
Noble Kinsmen and He7try VI 11.^ in which the 
hands of both Fletcher and Shakespeare are 
traceable still survive. The Two Noble Kins7nen^ 
when first printed in 1634, was stated to be the 
joint production of 'the memorable worthies of 
their time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William 
Shakespeare, gentlemen.' The main plot is based 
on Chaucer's Knights Tale^ and in the scenes 
developing that story Shakespeare's hand is 
plainly visible. The opening song, sung by 
Athenian nymphs who are strewing flowers at the 
wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, has the true 
Shakespearean ring (Two Noble Ki?ts7nen, Act I. 
sc. i. — Beaumont and Fletcher) : 

Roses their sharp spines being gone, 
Not royal in their smells alone, 

But in their hue ; 
Maiden pinks, of odour faint, 
Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint, 

And sweet thyme true ; 



58 

Primrose, first-born child of Ver, 
Merry spring-time's harbinger, 

With her bells dim ; 
Oxlips in their cradles growing. 
Marigolds on death-beds blowing, 

Lark-heels trim ; 

All, dear Nature's children sweet. 
Lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet. 

Blessing their sense ! {^Strewing flowers. 
Not an angel of the air. 
Bird melodious or bird fair, 

Be absent hence ! 

The crow, the slanderous cuckoo, nor 
The boding raven, nor chough hoar, 

Nor chatt'ring pie 
May on our bride house perch or sing. 
Or with them any discord bring. 

But from it fly ! 

Henry VIII. was in course of performance at 
the Globe Theatre on June 29, 1613, when the 
firing of some cannon on the stage set the play- 
house in flames. The house was burned down, 
and was rebuilt next year. Henry VIII. is a 
loosely constructed drama, and resembles a 
historical masque. It was first printed in 
the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works 
of 1623 as Shakespeare's sole production. But 
there are at least thirteen scenes which on 
metrical grounds are to be assigned to the pen 
of Fletcher, possibly with occasional aid from 
Massinger. Wolsey's magnificent farewell to 
Cromwell (Act ill. sc. ii. 11. 412-459), though in 
metre and language it often recalls the work 
of Fletcher, is of a greatness far excelling 
anything positively known to proceed from 
Fletcher's pen : 

Wolsey. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell ; 

I am a poor fall'n man, unworthy now 
To be thy lord and master : seek the king ; 
That sun, I pray, may never set ! I have told him 
What and how true thou art : he will advance thee ; 



59 

Some little memory of me will stir him — 

I know his noble nature — not to let 

Thy hopeful service perish too : good Cromwell, 

Neglect him not ; make use now, and provide 

For thine own future safety. 

Cro?nwelL O my lord ! 

Must I, then, leave you ? must I need forgo 
So good, so noble, and so true a master ? 
Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron, 
With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord. 
The king shall have my service, but my prayers 
For ever and for ever shall be yours. 

Wol. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear 
In all my miseries ; but thou hast forc'd me. 
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. 
Let 's dry our eyes : and thus far hear me, Cromwell ; 
And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be. 
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention 
Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee ; 
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory. 
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour, 
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ; 
A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it. 
Mark but my fall and that that ruin'd me. 
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition : 
By that sin fell the angels ; how can man then, 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it ? 
Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee ; 
Corruption wins not more than honesty. 
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace. 
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not : 
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
Thy God's, and truth's ; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, 
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr ! Serve the king ; 
And prithee, lead me in : 
There take an inventory of all I have. 
To the last penny ; 'tis the king's : my robe, 
And my integrity to heaven, is all 
I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell ! 
Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. 

Crom, Good sir, have patience. 

Wol. So I have. Farewell 

The hopes of court ! my hopes in heaven do dwell. 



6o 

This may safely be assigned to Shakespeare, 
although in it Shakespeare seems to have given 
proof of his versatility by echoing in a glorified 
key the habitual strain of Fletcher. 

With Henry VIII. Shakespeare's work was 
done. After his retirement from active connec- 
tion with the theatre his plays were still per- 
formed at court and on the public stages, but the 
last five years of his life were mainly passed at 
Stratford. In 1613 he paid a short visit to London 
in order to make what proved his last investment 
in real estate. He purchased a house in the 
neighbourhood of the Blackfriars Theatre for ^140, 
of which he left ^60 on mortgage. The deed ot 
conveyance bears the date March loth, and is now 
in the Guildhall Library. A second deed dated 
next day and relating to the mortgage is now 
in the British Museum. Both documents bear 
Shakespeare's signature. The Blackfriars house 
was leased immediately to a resident in the neigh- 
bourhood. In July 16 14 John Combe, a wealthy 
inhabitant of Stratford, died and left Shakespeare 
^5. At the end of the year Shakespeare was 
involved in a quarrel between the corporation of 
Stratford and the son of his friend Combe, who 
made an attempt to enclose the common field, 
which belonged to the corporation. The muni- 
cipal authorities made vain efforts to enlist Shake- 
speare's sympathy on their side, but Shakespeare 
appears to have supported the rapacious land- 
lord. The corporation was successful in the 
struggle. 

Shakespeare's health was failing at the beginning 
of 1616, and on 25th January he caused Francis 
Collins, a solicitor of Warwick, to draft his will, but 
the document was for the time left unsigned. Ac- 
cording to a local tradition, a month or two later 
he entertained at his house two literary friends, 
Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson. They had, it 
was reported, ^a merry meeting,' but Mtt seems 
drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fearour 



6i 

there contracted.' Whether this record be correct 
or not, there is httle doubt that his illness recurred 
in March, and that, after revising the will which 
had been drafted in January, he then duly com- 
pleted its execution. He died on Tuesday, April 
23, 1616, at the age of fifty-two. He was buried, 
two days later, inside Stratford Church, near the 
northern wall of the chancel. Over the poet's 
grave were inscribed the lines : 

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
To dig the dust enclosed heare ; 
Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones. 

Before 1623 a monument by a London sculptor 
of Dutch birth, Gerard Johnson, was affixed to the 
wall overlooking the grave. It includes a half- 
length figure of the dramatist, whose hands are 
disposed as if in the act of writing. The inscrip- 
tion runs as follows : 

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet. 

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast ? 
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
Within this monument ; Shakespeare with whome 
Quick nature dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
Far more then cost ; sith all yt he hath writt 
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. 

Obiit ano. doi 16 16. Aetatis 53. Die 23 Ap. 

Shakespeare was survived by his wife and two 
daughters. The widow died on August 6, 1623, 
at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried near the 
poet two days later. Both his daughters married. 
The younger, Judith, had become the wife of a 
neighbour's son, Thomas Quiney, two months 
before the poet's death (February 10, 161 6). She 
was the mother of three sons, all of whom died 
young. Surviving husband, sons, and sister, she 
died at Stratford on February 9, 1662, in 
her seventy-seventh year. The elder daughter, 



62 

Susanna, had married, in 1608, John Hall, a 
physician at Stratford. She was buried in Strat- 
ford Church, July 11, 1649, aged fifty-six. The 
inscription on her tombstone attests that she 
was endowed, in the opinion of her neighbours, 
with something of her father's wit and wisdom. 
Mrs Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last 
surviving descendant of the poet. She married 
twice, her first husband being Thomas Nash of 
Stratford (i 593-1 647) ; her second husband was 
Sir John Barnard (or Bernard) of Abington, 
Northamptonshire. Lady Barnard died childless 
at her husband's house at Abington, and was 
buried in the church there on February 17, 
1670. 

Shakespeare's will was proved by John Hall, his 
son-in-law, and joint-executor with his daughter, 
Mrs Hall, in London on 22nd June following his 
death. It has been stated, on the strength of the 
religious exordium to the will, that Shakespeare 
died a Roman Catholic, but, in point of fact, the 
exordium was the conventional formula, and proves 
nothing respecting the testator's personal belief. 
Shakespeare's elder daughter, Susanna Hall, was 
made by the will mistress of New Place and 
practically of all the poet's property. To his wife, 
whose name did not appear in the original draft, 
Shakespeare left in the final draft only his second 
best bed and its furniture. There is some proba- 
bility in the theory that his relations with her 
were not of a very cordial nature, but the slender 
bequest in the will cannot reasonably be taken as 
indicating a desire on the part of the poet to 
publish his indifference or dislike. It is likely 
that her age and ignorance of affairs unfitted her 
in the poet's eyes for the control of property, and 
she was accordingly committed to the care of his 
elder daughter. To his granddaughter, Elizabeth 
Hall, afterwards Lady Barnard, the poet bequeathed 
his plate, with the exception of a silver and gilt 
bowl, which went to his younger daughter Judith. 



63 

The latter also received, with a tenement in 
Chapel Lane (in remainder to the elder daughter), 
^300. Among other legatees, each of the drama- 
tist's fellow-actors, Heming, Burbage, and Condell, 
received a sum of 26s. 8d. wherewith to buy 
memorial rings. 

VIII. Of the thirty-seven plays of which Shake- 
speare was the author, only sixteen were published 
(in quarto) before his death. No less than twenty- 
one remained in manuscript ; but two of these, 
the second and third parts of Henry F/., had 
been issued in imperfect drafts, under the titles 
respectively of the Contention and the True 
Tragedy. Othello was the first of the unpub- 
lished plays to be issued after the poet's death ; 
it appeared in 1622. 

In 1623 the first attempt was made to issue a 
complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. The 
two actor-friends of the dramatist, John Heming 
and Henry Condell, were mainly responsible for 
the venture, but the expenses were defrayed by 
a small syndicate of printers and publishers. Of 
these, the chief were the printers William Jaggard 
and his son Isaac. Their partners were the book- 
sellers William Aspley, John Smethwick, and 
Edward Blount. Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard 
obtained on November 8, 1623, a license for the 
publication of sixteen of the twenty plays by 
Shakespeare that were not previously in print. 
The volume known as the First Folio seems to have 
been accessible to the public in the course of the 
same month. It included thirty-six plays ; Pericles^ 
though already in print, was omitted. On the title- 
page was engraved the crude portrait by Martin 
Droeshout, which Ben Jonson, in lines printed on 
the fly-leaf, declared to hit the poet to the life. 
Commendatory verses included a splended eulogy 
by Ben Jonson and poems by Hugh Holland, 
Leonard Digges, and I. M. — perhaps Jasper Mayne. 
The dedication was signed by Heming and Condell, 
and was addressed to the brothers, William Herbert, 



64 

Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain, and 
Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. In a suc- 
ceeding address 4o the great variety of readers' 
the same writers declare that their object in under- 
taking the publication was solely 'to keep the 
memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as 
was our Shakespeare.' The work is carelessly 
printed, and abounds in typographical errors. The 
text, which in the case of twenty-one of the plays 
is not accessible elsewhere, was drawn from more 
or less edited playhouse copies, and it is doubtful 
if in any instance the exact form in which a 
play came from Shakespeare's pen was presented 
in the volume. In the case of the fifteen plays 
that had previously appeared in quarto the folio 
text discloses numerous differences. The editors 
declared that the folio text was alone authentic, 
but this claim cannot be accepted without quali- 
fication. The imperfect quarto versions of the 
Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V. are re- 
placed in the folio by satisfactory texts ; but the 
quarto texts of Lovers Labour^ s Lost^ A Midsum- 
7ner Nighfs Dream^ and Richard II. are superior 
to those of the folio. Most of the great plays ot 
which the sole version is preserved in the folio 
are defaced by corrupt passages. Such, notably, 
are Coriolaniis^ A IPs Well that Ends Well., and 
Macbeth. Nevertheless, the First Folio remains 
intrinsically the most valuable volume in English 
literature ; perfect copies, w^hich are rarely met 
with, fetch very high prices both in this country 
and America. The highest price paid at a public 
sale for a perfect copy is ^1700; that sum was 
paid in London at Christie's salerooms, on July 
II, 1899, by Mr B. B. Macgeorge of Glasgow. 

The folio was reprinted in 1632, and a third 
edition appeared in 1663 without serious change ; 
but the third issue reappeared in the following 
year with an appendix of seven plays ' never before 
printed in folio.' The new pieces included Pericles.^ 
which had been published separately in quarto in 



6s 

Shakespeare's lifetime, and six other plays by other 
hands, which had also been published separately in 
Shakespeare's lifetime, and had been unjustifiably 
attributed to his pen by unscrupulous publishers, 
although it was obvious he had no hand in them. 
The names of the spurious plays were The London 
Prodigal^ The History of Tho?nas Lord Cromwell^ 
Sir John Oldcastle^ Lord Cobha^n^ The Puritan 
Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy^ and The Tragedy of 
Locrine. A fourth edition of the folio appeared in 
1685 with the spurious appendix. 

The editors of the First Folio anticipated the 
final and universal verdict of the character of 
Shakespeare's achievements when they wrote, 
'These plays have had their trial already and 
stood out all appeals.' The laws of the classical 
drama, which Shakespeare's plays defied, still com- 
manded respect in Shakespeare's day, but even 
lovers of the ancient ways acknowledged that 
the force of his genius had revealed new methods 
of dramatic art hitherto unsurpassed and unsus- 
pected. Ben Jonson, a champion of classical 
theories of art, in commendatory verses prefixed to 
the First Folio, claimed that Shakespeare had put 
to shame the poets of Greece and Rome. Through 
the three centuries that have elapsed since the 
great dramatist reached the maturity of his powers, 
his reputation has steadily grown in volume. In 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there 
were seasons of ebb or stagnation in the spread of 
his fame. After the Restoration public taste in 
England veered towards the French and classical 
dramatic models, and clumsy efforts were made 
to adapt Shakespeare's plays to the current 
vein of sentiment. Dryden, D'Avenant, Shad well, 
Nathan Tate, and others boldly travestied Shake- 
speare's text in revised versions of his plays. But 
the eclipse of Shakespeare's vogue was partial and 
temporary, and the Restoration adaptations quickly 
sank into oblivion. On the continent of Europe a 
resolute endeavour was made in the eighteenth 
5 



66 

century to prove Shakespeare unworthy of the 
honour that was paid him by his fellow-country- 
men. Voltaire, the great French writer, who long 
dominated the taste of Europe, made desperate 
efforts to prove Shakespeare a barbarian, and his 
work a mass of indecency and incoherence, which 
was only occasionally illumined by the true spirit 
of poetry. But Voltaire's conclusions were power- 
fully disputed by the German critic Lessing, and 
when in course of time Shakespeare's works 
appeared in competent translations in the various 
languages of Europe, Voltaire's views ceased to 
influence European opinion. 

Throughout the nineteenth century Shakespeare's 
fame has steadily marched onwards as in triumphal 
progress, not only among his own countrymen, 
but among intelligent men and women of other 
countries. In Germany, Shakespeare's work is 
studied as closely and as enthusiastically as in 
England or America ; and in France, Italy, and 
Russia reverence for it and him is increasing year 
by year. On the English stage the name of every 
actor and actress since Betterton, the great actor 
of the period of the Restoration, has been iden- 
tified with Shakespearean parts, and for the last 
eighty years every actor or actress of ambition in 
Germany, France, or Italy has been well content 
to base his or her claim to reputation on the his- 
trionic interpretation of Shakespearean roles. It 
may consequently be asserted that in every 
quarter of the globe to which civilised life has 
penetrated Shakespeare's power is now recognised. 
It is universally allowed that in knowledge of 
human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of 
passion, in fertility of fancy, in command of all the 
force and felicity of language, and in soundness 
of judgment, he has no rival in the literature of 
any nation or epoch. His unassailable supremacy 
ultimately springs from the versatile working of his 
insight and intellect by virtue of which his pen 
limned with unerring precision almost every grada- 
L. of C. 



67 

tion of thought and emotion that animates the 
Hving stage of the world. His genius enabled 
him to give being in his pages to all the shapes 
of humanity that present themselves on the high- 
way of life. So mighty a faculty thus sets at 
naught the common limitations of nationality and 
is acclaimed by the whole civilised world. 

Shakespeare's Portraits. — According to Aubrey's account, 
Shakespeare was 'a handsome well-shaped man,' and it is to be 
regretted that no wholly satisfactory portrait of him exists. The 
rudely-carved bust on the monument in Stratford Church and the 
copperplate engraving on the title-page of the First Folio were 
honest endeavours to depict the poet's features, but are not remark- 
able as works of art. Both, moreover, were produced after the 
poet's death. Numerous paintings have from time to time during 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries been claimed by owners or 
critics to be contemporary portraits of Shakespeare, but in no case 
has the claim been fully sustained. There is a likelihood, however, 
that the picture now in the Statford-on-Avon Memorial Gallery, 
and known as the 'Flower portrait' or the ' Droeshout painting,' 
may be the original painting on which Droeshout based his engrav- 
ing in the First Folio. Of considerable interest, too, is the Chandos 
portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London (named after a 
former owner, the Duke of Chandos) ; this picture was painted in 
the first half of the seventeenth century, and was at one time in 
the possession of Sir William D'Avenant. The tradition that it was 
from the brush of Shakespeare's friend and fellow-actor, Richard 
Burbage, cannot be corroborated ; it was doubtless painted for an 
admirer of the dramatist some years after his death, from somewhat 
fanciful verbal descriptions of his personal appearance. 

Bibliography. — In the eighteenth century Shakespeare was 
edited critically for the first time, and numerous efforts were made 
by a long succession of editors to free the text from the incoherences 
which disfigured the folio version. The earliest of the critical editors 
of Shakespeare was Nicolas Rowe, whose edition appeared in 1709. 
The poet Pope brought out an edition in 1725, and this was followed 
in 1733 by the work of Lewis Theobald, who proved himself a 
masterly emendator. Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition was published 
in 1744. Bishop Warburton revised Pope's edition in 1747. Dr 
Johnson's edition appeared in 1765, and that of Edward Capell, the 
most industrious of all students of the text and contemporary litera- 
ture, in 1768. The learned, although somewhat freakish, George 
Steevens greatly improved Dr Johnson's work in a reissue in 1773, 
which was often republished. In 1790 Edmund Malone completed 
an edition of high archaeological value. In 1803 appeared the first 
variorum edition, in twenty-one volumes ; this was prepared by Isaac 
Reed from notes made by George Steevens. The second variorum, 
mainly a reprint of the first, is dated in 1813 ; and the third and best, 
prepared by James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr Johnson's 
biographer, was published in 1821 ; it was largely based on material 



68 

amassed by Malone. Of editions produced in the nineteenth century, 
the most valuable are those prepared by Alexander Dyce in 1857 > by 
Nicolaus Delius, 1854-61 ; by Howard Staunton, 1868-70 ; and by the 
Cambridge editors, William George Clark and Dr Aldis Wright, 
1863-66. The notes to the Cambridge edition deal, however, 
solely with textual variations. More recent complete annotated 
editions are The TeTnpie Shakespeare^ edited by Mr Israel Gollancz 
(40 vols. i2mo, 1894-96), and The Ever s ley Shakespeare, edited by 
Professor C. H. Herford, with good introductions (10 vols. 8vo, 1899). 

Elaborate materials for a biography were collected by James 
Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps in his Outlines of the Life of Shake- 
speare (7th ed. 1887). Mr F. G. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual 
(1876), in his Life of Shakespeare (i886), in his History of the Stage 
(1890), and in his Biographical Chronicle of the English Drarna 
(1891), added for the first time much useful information respecting 
the history of the contemporary stage and Shakespeare's relations 
with fellow-dramatists. The latest general life of Shakespeare and 
account of his works is by the writer of the present article (ist ed. 
November 1898 ; illus. ed. December 1899 ; Students' ed. 1900). 

For notices of Stratford, R. B. Wheler's History and Antiqui- 
ties (1806), John R. Wise's Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its 
Neighbourhood {id>6x), the present writer's Stratford-on-Avon to the 
Death of Shakespeare (1890), and Mrs C. C. Stopes's Shakespeare's 
Warwickshire ContemporarHes (1897) may be consulted. Wise 
appends to his volume a tentative ' Glossary of Words still used 
in Warwickshire to be found in Shakespeare.' Nathan Drake's 
Shakespeare and his Ti7nes (18 17) and G. W. Thornbury's 
Shakespeare's England (1856) collect much material respecting 
Shakespeare's social environment. Francis Douce's Illustrations 
of Shakespeare (1807; new ed. 1839), Shakespeare's Library (ed. 
J. P. Collier and W. C. Hazlitt, 1875), Shakespeare's Plutarch 
(ed. Skeat, 1875), and Shakespeare's Holinshed{ed. W. G. Boswell- 
Stone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of Shakespeare's 
plots. Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon (1874) and Dr 
E. A. Abbott's Shakesperian Grammar '\i'^6g\ new ed. 1893) are 
valuable aids to a study of the text. Useful concordances to the 
Plays have been prepared by Mrs Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the 
Poems by Mrs H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays 
and Poems, in one volume, with references to numbered lines, by 
John Bartlett (London and New York, 1895). The publications of 
the (Old) Shakespeare Society (1841-53), of the New Shakspere 
Society (1874-93), and of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 
of Weimar (1865-1901) comprise many papers of value in the 
aesthetic, textual, historical, and biographical study of Shake- 
speare. The most important critical studies by Englishmen are 
Coleridge's Notes and Lectures (collected by T. Ashe, 1883), 
Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspere' s Plays (1817), Professor 
Dowden's K^y^ay^jr/^r^, his Mind and Art (1875), Mr A. C. Swin- 
burne's A Study of Shakespeare (1879). Reference may also be 
made with advantage to Thomas Spencer Baynes's Shake- 
speare Studies (1893), to Dr Ward's chapters on Shakespeare 
in his English Dramatic Literature (new ed. 1898), to Richard 
G. Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1885), and to 
Mr F. S. Boas's Shakespeare and his Predecessors (1895). The 
essays on Shakespeare's heroines, respectively by Mrs Jameson 



69 

In 1832 and Lady Martin in 1885, are pleasant reading. Among 
numerous German criticisms of Shakespeare, most interesting are 
the fragmentary notices in Goethe's Wilhelnt Meister and Wahrheit 
und Dichtungy Heine's Studies of Shakespeare's Heroines (Eng 
trans. 1895), and Kreyssig's Shakespeare-Fragen (Leipzig, 1871). 
Ulrici's Shakespeare's Dramatic Art and Gervinus's Commen- 
taries^ both of which are well known in English translations, are of 
comparatively smaller value. William. Shakespeare^ an attractive 
if somewhat fanciful treatise by the Danish writer Dr Georg Brandes, 
was published in an English translation (1898, 2 vols.). Among recent 
French critics of Shakespeare the most memorable are Guizot's 
Shakespeare et son Temps (1852) ; a rhapsody by the poet Victor 
Hugo (1864) ; and Alfred M^zieres's Shakespeare^ ses CEuvres et ses 
Critiques (i860), which is a saner appreciation. The latest and one 
of the best works on Shakespeare in Italian is Signior Federico 
Garlanda's Guglielmo Shakespeare : il Poeta e t Uomo (Rome, 
1900). Extensive bibliographies of Shakespeare's works and 
Shakespeariana are given in Lowndes's Library Manual (ed. 
Bohn), in Franz Thimm's Shakespeariana (1864 ^.nd 1871), in the 
Encyclopcedia Britannica (9th ed. ; skilfully classified by Mr H. 
R. Tedder), in the Dictionary of National Biography (by the 
present writer), and in the British Museum. Catalogue (the 
Shakespearean entries in which, comprising 3680 titles, were sepa- 
rately published in 1897). 



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